


Taking Care

by not_whelmed_yet



Series: Drifting Together [3]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Action & Romance, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Development, Developing Friendships, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Replaces Empire of Stone, Returning Home, Road Trip: in space!, Slow Burn, canon compliant for mtmte, fill-in scenes, mutual rescuing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2019-06-11 04:39:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 63,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15307668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/not_whelmed_yet/pseuds/not_whelmed_yet
Summary: Ratchet leaves the Lost Light to find Drift. They return together during Dying of the Light, with much changed between them.The miniseries Empire of Stone tells one possible story of how they reunited. This is a different possibility...full of all the things I wanted and EoS didn't give me: romance, character continuity and a grand sci-fi journey home constantly waylaid by adventure.





	1. The Seething

**Author's Note:**

> Note 1: This is a continuation of my series Drifting Together. The first two installments are 130,000 words of Drift and Ratchet backstory and a glacially slow burn from acquaintances to friendship. If you want to start here you can; I've tried to keep things mostly canon-compliant.
> 
> Note 2: As always, if you need something tagged feel free to reach out to me in the comments or on tumblr
> 
> Note 3: Huge shout out to choomchoom, my awesome friend and writing partner/beta. You've made this whole series so much better

He found the ship at anchor, empty, at the edge of the Seething Space. Ratchet hesitated to follow.

It wasn't fear of what lay beyond; it was a sensible distrust of any location described in the texts as "an unexplored and deadly labyrinth". For a moment he entertained the fantasy that if he waited for a few minutes Drift would emerge without assistance. Then he made ready to follow him.

Drift's shuttle was a mess; solar scars and dents and what looked like plasmafire littering its surface, so Ratchet didn't feel bad getting out his laser scalpel and burning a message onto the doorway. Just in case Drift did get out of there first. He checked his leadline, hooked into his hip and tethering him to the ship. He had no intention of getting lost.

Then he pushed off the shuttle's surface and dove inside.

The outer folds of the Seething parted around him and swallowed up all sight of the ship. He was drawn deeper until the inner walls caught him.

Inside, the walls of the inner scaffolding grew in spirals and interconnected passageways, a tight lattice of mineralized cells. The living colonies of the Seething hung wetly in color-shifting fronds, gaseous folds billowing up from their surfaces. Ratchet shivered as unidentifiable liquids condensed on his plating in the sudden warm atmosphere. The surface of the Seething was sticky, resistant as he pulled his legs free to stand in the cramped space. It was a unnatural feeling, low-gravity but held fast by his feet.

He opened his comm channels and sent another ping out on Drift's personal frequency. No response. He couldn't get a read on lifesigns, the tunnels of the Seething obstructing the signal.

No way to know which way Drift had gone; he picked a direction at random and tried to get get a sense of the place. Drift had to be looking for something, once he knew what was normal he’d be able to pick out what that _something_ might be.

The Seething was an overly portentous name for the place, he decided. It was basically just a coral reef in space—and the tiny creatures that made up the structure of the Seething weren't especially lively.

Though there were other things lurking in the tunnels, he discovered. Wee creatures that spat acid and little zippy ones that pinged through the air bouncing off the walls at high speed. Long undulating ribbons of spattering electricity and spiny calcified things that bobbed gently on the currents of the clouds. Ratchet steered clear of all of them, slogging through as best he could—

Right back to a damned corridor he'd already wandered through, his leadline leading off back the tunnel he'd just explored. Ratchet rolled his optics and unhooked himself and wound the rope back in. He didn't need to get literally knotted up in the labyrinth.

Somehow he found himself doing the same exact thing barely an hour later.

As Ratchet coiled up his leadline, he caught a flash of motion in the corner of his eye, something white with sharp edges. When he turned to look it was already gone, swallowed up in the gently shifting colors. But as he watched, one of the spiky creatures bobbed across the wall, vanishing in a kaleidoscope of colors. _Huh. Some sort of camouflage?_ The living colonies seemed to be able to mimic the appearance of the life within the colony.

He watched more carefully on his way through the next tunnel and realized that only _some_ of the zippy things were actually there: you could hear a whistling sound as they cut through the air for the real ones. The others were illusory. The colonies had a harder time mimicking the larger creatures, the image fragmented between so many cells of color. But he kept his optics glued on the walls and finally caught sight of Drift.

It was only for half a second, Drift's frame passing across the colony wall in a flash of sharp finials, blue optics, bent shoulders.

Ratchet froze, waiting to see if the image would come back. Preferably with some clue of where Drift was. When it failed to reappear he tried to keep moving.

Tried. Key word there.

His damn fragging feet were stuck. The colony goo had oozed out over them and glued them in place. Ratchet groaned and awkwardly bent to try and pull his feet free, accidentally planting his hand straight in the goop. Scared to end up stuck as a three-legged tripod, he pulled away with too much force and fell over backwards, feet still stuck.

"I really deserve a more dignified death, you know," Ratchet grumbled, swinging his already-sticky hand at the wall and trying to pull himself up. He missed the swing and caught his arm in the goo instead. "I refuse to die in a glorified glue-trap like a cockroach."

Probably the colony harvested energy by dissolving stuff that go stuck in its sticky secretions. That would make a lot of sense. What a _fun_ science fact. Perceptor would have been thrilled.

He was going to figure out how to get himself free any minute. He was just going to take a few seconds to sulk first.

Drift's stupid fragging face swanned across the ceiling of the tunnel and Ratchet stuck his tongue out at it. Damn illusions. The illusion didn't vanish or splinter out, though. It just kept looking at him, perplexed.

"Ratchet?" Drift asked. "You're real?"

Ratchet stared up and through him, willing the nearest star to suffer a sudden solar plume that might incinerate him, Drift and the entire Space Reef and it's damn cockroach glue-traps. But Drift was still there and staring at him, hands pressed to his face with his optics poking out over his fingertips, overbright like he was seconds away from a emotional meltdown.

"You're real," Drift whispered into his hands. "You're real."

"Yeah, I'm real. I'm also damned uncomfortable, so would you mind helping me up and _then_ freaking out?"

Drift choked on a laugh, then reached down to grasp Ratchet's one free arm and pull him back to his feet. Reaching into his hip compartment, Drift fetched out a switchblade. He thumbed a switch on the base and the blade warmed to cherry red. "The heat denatures the bonded cells," he explained. Then he knelt down to turn the blade onto the glue holding Ratchet down. There was a breath of heat and then the goo liquified again, freeing him. Ratchet picked up his feet a few times, just to be sure he was really free.

Drift snapped the blade closed and slipped it away again. He stepped forward and threw his arms around Ratchet's shoulders, head tucked down against his neck.

"Woah," Ratchet said. "Um, thanks for the save?"

"You're real," Drift said, patting at Ratchet's back as if ascertaining he wasn't a ghost. "I thought I was hallucinating ag—I thought I was imagining you."

"Naw, I'm here," Ratchet said. "There seems to be some sort of visual mimicry happening, where some of the colony cells capture the visuals around them and other cells halfway across the colony mimic that. Caught a glimpse of you myself."

"Right. Okay." Drift hugged Ratchet tight for a moment. "I figured there had to be something here when I found your ridiculous safety rope. Followed it right to you."

"It's not—it is _not_ ridiculous! Do you know what happens to bots that go caving without marking where they've come from? They end up like Tailgate."

"Sure, sure," Drift said placatingly. With a sigh, he stepped back. He moved his hands about uncertainly, as if not sure where to put them, then hooked his thumbs under the edges of his hip plating. When he spoke again, he'd schooled his voice to a dull monotone. "So what are you doing here, Ratchet."

Ratchet spread his hands wide and did his best to give him a reassuring smile. "I'm here to take you home—or to tell you that you _can_ come home, I'm not making you—look. If you want to go back, I just came out to let you know that's possible."

Drift was staring a hole in the ground by Ratchet’s feet, still not meeting his gaze. "Home."

"I mean—the Lost Light, I meant the Lost Light. Or I guess you could go back to Cybertron if you wanted."

"But I'm," Drift clicked his teeth together. He lifted one hand to his chest, covering up the red-smeared scores where his badge had been ripped off.

He'd never gotten that fixed, Ratchet noted. Apparently the hopscotch of monasteries and religious orders he'd followed Drift through to here hadn't believed it was their duty to repair itinerant travelers, because Drift looked...ragged. He was still functioning, but his weight was shifted unevenly, his movements didn't roll smooth, there was a bit of a flicker to the intensity of his optics Ratchet didn't like. And he clearly hadn't bothered to bathe at any point during his intergalactic adventures.

"Rodimus confessed," Ratchet said. "And you're not exiled any more. That's why I've come to get you back."

Drift startled. "He...what? Is he still captain?"

No point in getting into all that now. "Yeah, the quest's still on and Rod's still captain. So, do you want to go back or nah? Because I'd rather not just stand around in this place, gives me the creeps."

Drift walked away. He fucking walked away. Just shouldered past Ratchet and walked off down the tunnel, shoulders hunched, arms wrapped tight around his chest.

Ratchet staggered after him, feet stick-squelching to the floor and slowing him up. Drift took two tight corners and Ratchet was scared he'd lost him until he came into sight again, crouched small with his arms wrapped around his head. Ratchet slowed to an ungainly stop and froze, unsure of what to say.

Drift poked his head up and glared at Ratchet, optics blazing. "A year. A year and you just—" his voice sputtered off into static. His words came through in cut-off fragments. "I let—everything—gave up—no reason—"

Ratchet walked close and eased himself down to sit beside Drift, trying to ignore the feeling of the organic slime against his plating. He didn't know what to say, what he could say, so he sat and waited for Drift to get ahold of himself.

Back before he'd known Drift's story, he would have been at a complete loss as to what was going on. But forced himself to slow down and consider it and it made sense. Drift lost people and didn't get them back, that was just how his world worked. When Ratchet hadn't immediately reached out to him after his exile, he'd probably assumed Ratchet _had_ seen his present and couldn’t forgive him. The possibility that he'd been so fragging cryptic that Ratchet had stumbled across it months later would never have occurred to him.

Ratchet reached out and wrapped a tentative arm around Drift's shoulders. Drift was shaking so hard that his arm rattled against his plating. Ratchet squeezed tighter.

"You didn't deserve that," Ratchet said. "Whatever you did, you didn't deserve what happened to you. I wish I could have found you sooner."

Eventually Drift subsided off into silence, leaning against Ratchet. "I gave up on you," he said finally.

"That's fair," Ratchet said. "I kinda deserved it."

"We're probably stuck to the ground now," Drift said.

"Well that kinda sucks all the drama out of the moment, doesn't it," Ratchet said, trying to push himself up. Sure enough, the fragging colony slime had glued his aft to the tunnel floor. "The space reef has annexed to my aft in an attempt to eat me," he pronounced, trying to use Drift's shoulder to push himself up.

Drift snorted. "That's not what it's called, Ratch. And it can't _eat_ you, you're not digestible."

"The space reef has annexed my aft in an attempt to dissolve it into constituent minerals to build its cell walls," Ratchet pronounced grimly.

That got an actual laugh out of Drift. Ratchet took the win, undignified though it might be, and fooled around for a bit trying to steal Drift's heatblade so he could bust himself out.

"You've got a torch in your hand," Drift protested.

"Pfft, in this atmosphere? I'm not getting blown up."

"Well, why didn't you bother to bring a heatblade with you?" Drift said, holding the thing up high behind Ratchet's reach.

"Well, why didn't you bother to bring _more than one_?"

"Why would I have brought more than—" Drift froze, then snapped the knife closed and put his finger to his lips.

»Ratchet? Don't talk. And don't move.« his voice crackled over Ratchet's internal radio.

Ratchet was going to ask _why_ when _why_ floated over them. It was huge, all rippling ribbons and dangling stingers, movements slow and sinuous. It was a eerie shade of pure white, like someone had forgotten to color in a bit of the reef. It churned up the clouds as it went, the walls of the colony sparking bright where its stingers made contact. Drift watched it, stock still, until it disappeared around the corner. And then they stayed like that a little longer, waiting till it felt like the danger had really passed.

»What was that?« Ratchet asked over radio.

Drift licked his lips, then flicked the blade open again and let it warm to red. "The people from the planet where it originates called it a Sunstrike. They hunt by vibrations and heat. One of the most dangerous predators in the Seething. Didn't you research anything before you came here?" Drift leaned over and began un-sticking Ratchet.

"I read everything I could find in a reputable scientific text," Ratchet said. "Not a lot of those. And what do you mean 'planet where it originates'?"

"Well, if you'd read through the religious and historical literature, you'd know that none of the Seething natively inhabits the colonies. This was just your ordinary stellar tumbleweed, sterile except for the phototrophic colonies. Lively when near enough to a star, dormant when it drifted away. Then the hermitage took up root here."

Ratchet heaved himself to his feet, then turned back to give Drift a hand in ungluing himself. "And so people filled this place with deadly invasive species on purpose?"

"Well, the hermitage is rumored to be immortal, and somehow a local death cult sprung up around them. And then opposing factions sprung up around proving those death cultists wrong, by bringing deadly creatures from their home planets to bring down the hermitage."

"I don't even know who we're talking about," Ratchet said. "Aliens, I assume. The fleshy sort?"

"Be more respectful, we're talking about your elders," Drift said with a smile. "But yeah, basically. Aliens."

"And how'd that work out for the death-cultists and the...anti-death-cultists?"

"Well, some of them died by misadventure trying to worship within the Seething. Most of them just plain old died. This was nearly fifteen million years ago, according to most scholarship."

Ratchet offered Drift a hand up and pulled him to his feet. "So, this place really is a death trap. I know I just threw this at you last time, but do you want to go home?"

Drift pocketed his heatblade and shrugged. "Yeah, Ratch, I want to go home. But I can't go yet."

"What?"

"I'm here for a reason, you showing up doesn't change that," Drift said. "The hermitage seeded here sixteen million years ago. According to reputable scholarship, the Knights of Cybertron made contact with the hermitage, shared wisdom with them. If there's any species that can give us a clue as to what we'll find at the end of our quest, it'll be right here."

"You want to stay in the tunnels of death to look for some aliens who _might_ have met some Cybertronians a long time ago who _theoretically_ could have been the Knights."

"You can go back to the ship and wait for me if you like," Drift said.

"Most certainly not. I am not scared of your weird geriatric aliens." Ratchet crossed his arms. "And I'm not losing you again. Took forever to find you properly."

"Technically, you didn't find me," Drift pointed out. "I found you. Stuck like a truck with his wheels in the air."

"I would have gotten myself out of there at _any minute_ , if you hadn't shown up and interrupted me."

"If you say so, Ratchet." Drift said. He pointed off down the tunnel. "We're heading that way, so try and keep up."

"It’s not my fault," Ratchet said, "You're lighter, you don't sink down so far into the stuff."

"If you say so, Ratchet," Drift said cheerily.

"I'd forgotten how annoying you were. Somehow. A genuine miracle, I'd managed to forget how incredibly irritating you are."

Drift led him down a series of increasingly narrowing tunnels, the walls flashing and breaking with bits of multi-colored ghost images. Ratchet tried to keep moving so the glue didn't set. From the narrow tunnels they spilled out into a broad opening where a brood of bobbing gaseous creatures filled the upper reaches. Drift kept low to avoid them and led Ratchet to the far wall, where there was an odd and irregular hole.

"You've been vandalizing the place," Ratchet said, faking disapproval.

"The old tunnel got sealed over with new growth," Drift said. "Took me forever to melt it back. Come on in, we're nearly there."

The tunnel was narrow, but after a few feet the texture transitioned from wet to smooth, coiling spirals of red growth replacing the familiar walls of the colony structures. The tunnel snaked left, then dipped downwards, or maybe upwards? Without the slime to hold him down he'd lost all sense of direction, pushing himself through the tunnels and bumping up against the walls behind Drift, who was gliding along irritatingly smoothly.

At last Drift pulled himself to a stop and turned back to Ratchet. "It's only a little bit farther. I've already cleared the path."

"How exactly are you going to talk to these aliens?" Ratchet asked.

"They talked to the Knights," Drift said. "So they have to speak somehow."

"Nothing on that in your texts? What if they can only speak Old Cybertronian? Or other languages too out of date for the universal translator to handle?"

"With Primus's blessing, we'll find a way," Drift said firmly.

“Oh, well, that’s great. In that case I retract the question, I’m sure _Primus_ has it handled.” Ratchet looked around. "Wait." The red-walled tunnels had completely replaced the soft Seething colonies with their sticky surfaces and buzzing visual activity. If Drift had gotten this far, how had he seen Ratchet and known to go back and look for him?

"What is it, Ratch?" Drift asked.

_He'd already turned back._

Way back, when they'd found the Titan under Crystal City and Chromedome had wanted to probe its mind for the answers, Drift had hesitated. The problem with pouring everything into searching for one thing is that you ran the risk of splitting yourself open. Proven wrong, proven right, what did Drift have left after the end of the quest?

"Nothing," Ratchet said. "Let's go meet your aliens." He offered Drift a hand and they floated out to the bright light together, tethered by Ratchet's leadline.

The tunnelway led out into a space that opened up to the sun. The red spirals of the tunnel laced together to form a open circle. Ratchet looked around, but there were no aliens in sight, only the towering sylvan growths. He looked aside at Drift and found him beaming, overawed open-mouthed smile as he looked around them.

"Welcome to the Hermitage, Ratchet," Drift said. "The oldest known organic individual in our known space."

"Hello, little mechanicals," The very air spoke, a strut-vibrating rumble. The interwoven trunks shook against one another and it took Ratchet a moment to long to realize that that was the source of the sound. "We've heard of heard of hearing of you, it's an honor to meet our old friends’ saplings."

"Then it's true, that our people came here, met you? You've seen them?" Drift asked.

"We don't see the ways you do, but we spoke. Shared stories. There were so many of them they filled the grove."

"Where did they go?" Drift asked.

The air hung with silence, then the soft susurration of wordless branches rubbing against one another.

"We don't know." A much smaller voice spoke.

"We don't remember."

"Oh, come the fuck on," Ratchet said. "Seriously?"

"Nothing can remember millions of years of memories with perfect clarity. Can you?"

Ratchet tightened his grip on Drift's hand. "Some things, important things? Yes."

"We are not _one_ in the same way you are _two_. When the parts of us that held our memories whither, we lose the information they held. We only have the stories we told ourselves about what had happened."

"Is there anything you can remember?" Drift asked.

"They were small, like you. And they asked a great many questions we did not know the answers to, like you. They did not understand our decision to stay here instead of seeding out into the cosmos. But they told good stories."

"Do you remember _when_ you met these Cybertronians?" Ratchet asked.

 

* * *

 

"I can't believe you," Drift said, kicking at Ratchet's leadline as he went.

Ratchet followed him up, slowly winding the leadline as they followed it back to the shuttles. "It was a reasonable question," Ratchet said.

"Just couldn't resist trying to prove me wrong," Drift grumbled.

"Hey, they said they didn't remember when they met "the knights" so it's not like I disproved your theory. It was a reasonable question! What if their "old friends" had been some Decepticons who wandered through here a few thousand years ago? Or the Circle of Light? Or some of the colonists? It's not like there's only one group of Cybertronians who've ever left the planet."

Drift didn't say anything, but at least he stopped for a bit so Ratchet could catch up as he coiled the rope up behind him.

"You know,” Ratchet said, “I thought you might stick around, hang out with the big tree aliens for awhile."

"Nope. I'm done. We can go back now." Drift crossed his arms across his chest and pouted. "I never should have tried to find the knights on my own. Shouldn't have tried to rush wisdom from Primus."

"It didn't go that badly," Ratchet said. "The place is a bit gross, sure, and it's weird as all hell, but the aliens were interesting."

He shook the leadline, trying to knock some of the liquid off. It didn't have enough weight to get stuck but it sure had managed to soak up a lot of liquid. Gross. Drift watched him with half a smile as Ratchet stooped to pick up the rope.

"You could help, you know," Ratchet said.

"Eh, I wasn't the one who decided to bring along several miles of rope for no reason."

"No reason. _No reason._ Did you already forget about the bit with the tree aliens where my leadline was the only thing that stopped us from floating off into the sun? Also, how were _you_ planning on finding your way back to the ship? Divine intervention?"

"Some of us have a sense of direction," Drift said.

"Is that right? Now which of us was it who got lost in Hedonia, remind me?"

"Ratchet, stop."

"Oh, I know you remember. ‘The fastest way back to the Leading Light is surely through this underground gambling den that's a cover for the—’"

"Ratchet, drop it!"

Ratchet looked up to see Drift running at him, sword out. He looked over his shoulder, certain that something was behind him, when something stabbed him in the hand.

He dropped the leadline and and tried to pull away. But there was something stuck in him, a wriggling wormlike thing latched onto his hand. On the floor of the tunnel, a whole nest of the things were swarming up from little pockmarks on the ground.

Drift caught Ratchet around the waist as he ran, knocking him clear off his feet and into the air. Low gravity. Drift ran and Ratchet was pushed along with him as he retreated. Ratchet scrabbled at the white-hot worm trying to burrow into his hand. Too slippery to grab. He unfolded his other hand to get the laser scalpel out and sliced the writhing body off midway through. The upper part didn't lose its grip, wriggling deeper. "Drift, help!"

Drift stopped and spun, pulling out his other sword and turning to face the oncoming swarm, which were apparently _swimming_ through the viscous walls and floors of the Seething to follow them. Drift dipped his fingers into his hip compartment and tossed Ratchet his heatblade. "Burn it off!" He yelled. "It's a Mordant, it's poisoning you!"

"Oh, great," Ratchet said.

He caught the knife and tried to get it to heat, growling in frustration as the damned thing refused to start up. Third time it finally lit white hot and Ratchet shoved the heated blade up against the severed head. The thing thrashed and shrieked and then finally detached. Ratchet kept the flare on it until it stopped moving, outer skin shriveling.

His hand was radiating pain in tight bursts that seemed to echo from palm to elbow. He was also losing fuel, bubbling up in the low gravity. Pressing his hand up against his chest didn't solve either problem, but it slowed them while he waited for Drift to finish with the swarm.

Drift was a flurry of motion, swords slicing left and right as he tried to cut off the swarming Mordants. They moved through the walls of the tunnels and then launched themselves out at him, cutting around behind him and coming in from every direction. Drift pivoted and threw himself backwards, cutting off two that had slipped past him and were heading towards Ratchet.

Ratchet pulled his legs in, all of his limbs suddenly very heavy. It was hard to keep focus on Drift, the dim lights of the colony's florescence suddenly not enough. He had one good arm...and a blaster he didn't dare fire for fear of blowing up the tunnel...surely he could think of some better way to help.

Drift glanced back over his shoulder at Ratchet, barely batting aside one of the Mordants in time. "Ratchet, stay with me," he said.

"Not going anywhere," Ratchet said, or tried to say. The words all came out as soup, voxcorder suddenly uncooperative.

Drift muttered something under his breath and released his swords. They hung there, beginning a slow rotation as Drift reached back and drew his Great Sword. The air crackled and the sword's hilt began to glow, channeling down the energy from Drift's spark.

Rathet's vision sputtered and he caught the next several moments as if watching a video with most of the frames missing. Drift raised the Great Sword with both hands and then plunged it into the floor of the tunnel. Energy split through the air and lit the clouds white. Mordants sizzled in the air and the walls of the tunnel.

Drift, holding Ratchet up against his chest, optics wide with fear. "Ratch, focus. Please. Tell me how you're feeling."

"Losing time," Ratchet said, trying to push down his panic and narrow it down to useful symptoms. "Can't focus. Snakes?"

"What are snakes, Ratchet?" Drift said soothingly. He'd unbent Ratchet's arm and was running probing fingers along his plating seams, one hand pressed tight against his weeping palm.

"Little wormy things. Thing that bit me. Are they gone?"

"They're gone," Drift said. "Ratchet, the venom is doing something to your nerve circuits. I'm going to try and flush it out of your system, but I need your help. Can you help me?"

Drift's face blinked in and out, then just out. Ratchet tried to reboot his optics and got nothing. "I've lost visuals," he said, trying to keep calm. "And HUD. I can't see anything Drift."

"Primus," Drift muttered. When he continued, his reassuring optimism had a bit of a desperate edge to it. “I’m sure that’s temporary. I remember what you taught me, I don’t need you to guide me. I just need you to pop the locks on your forearm access plates, okay? Just focus for a moment and do that."

Ratchet concentrated and, with a little difficulty, triggered the release protocol. Drift's fingers pulled the access plates open and Ratchet could feel the soft pressure as Drift clamped off the isolation valve at his inner elbow, stopping the poison from progressing further.

"Okay, that's done," Drift said. "Now we just have to flush out the system. In through the auxiliary fuel port," He muttered something under his breath, then wedged something under Ratchet's wrist-catch, gently prying it up. "Gravity," Drift said. "Fuck."

"Wass problem?" Ratchet asked. He could still feel his hand pulsing red hot, like his plating was a size too small and was squeezing his nerve circuits.

"Not a problem, I've got this. It's fine," Drift muttered, rubbing a reassuring circle with his thumb on the back of Ratchet's hand. "Just relax."

"S'not very relaxing, I don't know what you're doing." Ratchet mumbled. He kept trying to focus, but focusing was very difficult. He wasn't sure if Drift wasn't explaining things well or if he was losing time in the middle of the explanations. Something about transferring fuel in through his auxiliary fuel intake while siphoning it out of the wound at his wrist, pulling clean fuel through the circuit from wrist to elbow and back.

Drift kept muttering prayers under his breath in a way that was decidedly not soothing. Ratchet tried his best not to make any distracting noises, but his neural circuitry was firing wildly and not responding to his commands to _please_ shut down his sensornet. Drift barely knew what he was doing, he didn't need any distractions.

"Hey, it's okay," Drift crooned, hands back around his and soothingly cool against his hot plating. "I'm sorry it hurts, I'm almost ready."

"I can handle it," Ratchet said. "You don't have to treat me like a sparkling."

"Of course." Drift said. He waited a beat, then said worriedly, "Ratchet, I think the venom is corrosive."

"What."

"You've got surface pitting where it'd hooked in. I can't tell what it's doing to the internals of your hand. You can fix this, right? Once I flush out the system so the neurological effects get diluted and get us back to your shuttle, you'll be able to fix this."

Ratchet groaned. "I don't have the specific antagonist, I don't know what the venom's made of."

"We'll handle that. Somehow," Drift said. "Little pressure, aw slag, go in the—okay, little pressure _now_."

Something clamped over Ratchet's palm and then over the auxiliary fuel intake. Ratchet could feel when the fuel begin to circulate. In at the auxiliary port, branching out and then shunted back down his arm when it hit the isolation valve, finally draining from the wound at his palm where Drift was had rigged up some sort of suction pump.

Drift lapsed into silence, one arm wrapped protectively around Ratchet's chest and the other holding the suction clamp against his palm. Drift was flushing the wound out with fuel from somewhere, it had to be _his_ fuel. Not the sort of thing you should be doing during improvised field surgery. Drift would have no way of knowing when they'd flushed enough out to dilute the neurotoxin’s effects. Ratchet was going to have to talk him through it.

"Drift?"

Drift didn't reply. He pinged Ratchet on radio instead with a quick »Don't talk, there's something in the tunnel.« His arm around Ratchet's chest tightened.

»Drift?« He pinged back, waited five seconds and did it again. »Drift?«

»Don't move. It's the Sunstrike again. I think it might have sensed us.«

The what? What was...the weird ribbon creature Drift had warned him about earlier. The thing with the stingers and the predator's grace.

He tried to hold himself absolutely still in Drift's arms, a feat made easier by the fact that the leaden heaviness in his limbs had definitely transitioned into fullblown paralysis at some point. He hadn't cared much about losing HUD and visuals till just then, knowing there was something there and unable to see it. His arm felt like it was on fire and the thing hunted by heat, what if the creature could sense that and used it to home in on them?

»Drift. Talk to me?«

»Don't be scared.«

»Why, can it smell fear?«

»No. Because I'm going to keep you safe, no matter what. And I don't think it sensed us. I think it's leaving now.«

»Okay. Great. Thanks for scaring me out of my plating for no reason Drift.«

Drift didn’t ping back.

»I didn't mean that. I know there was a reason,« Ratchet sent.

The suction finally let up and Drift popped the connections out. "I think that's enough. I hope that's enough," Drift rasped. "We've got to get out of here."

"I'm not going to be able to walk," Ratchet said. "Even if you're right and this wears off, it'd be hours." Though now that he said it out loud, he noticed that talking had gotten easier at some point. And he didn't feel like he was in danger of slipping out of consciousness. Maybe it was already getting better, though his hand hadn't stopped hurting and the pain seemed to have spread all the way up to the isolation valve they’d clamped off..

"I know." Drift let Ratchet go, hands still close enough that Ratchet could feel their radiant heat above his plating as Drift waited to see if Ratchet would float away or if the floor would hold him. "I'm going to be right back. I promise."

Drift was back before Ratchet had a chance to properly "get his panic on" as Tailgate _insisted_ on calling it. Drift pulled the heatblade out of Ratchet's good hand and set about freeing him. Ratchet had forgotten he was still holding it.

"I need my hands free in case there’s trouble," Drift said. "So this might be a little undignified. Sorry." Ratchet didn't get a chance to respond before Drift had _picked him up_ , making use of the low gravity again to maneuver Ratchet so he had his legs around Drift's waist and his arms over his shoulders. Drift tied a length of rope around Ratchet's legs to keep him from floating off, then started to tie his wrists together.

Ratchet hissed as the rope—his rope, this was absolutely the leadline he'd been carefully coiling back up, sliced up and stolen—rubbed against his hypersensative plating.

"Sorry," Drift said again. "Where does the pain stop?"

"Elbow," Ratchet gritted out.

Drift awkwardly made the tie above Ratchet's elbows, leaving the rope practically brushing Drift's neck.

"It's a good thing it's low grav, you'd never be able to carry me like this otherwise," Ratchet said.

Drift took a step, then another. When Ratchet didn't float off, Drift picked up the pace.

The journey back to the ship proceeded in an awkward frantic rush. Drift staggered and bumped them into walls and kept knocking Ratchet's head against the tops of the tunnels. He grew less and less talkative as they went, both swords drawn and held at the ready. At first Ratchet wasn't sure if it was his imagination, but the poison definitely started to wear off as they walked. He could see a bit, blobs of light that moved as they walked.

He knew they'd passed out of the Seething when the moisture on his plating boiled off, suddenly exposed to unprotected space. Drift untied Ratchet and propelled them slowly towards one of the shuttles. It wasn't until the airlock hissed open that Ratchet was sure it was _his_ shuttle. Drift bundled him inside and sat him on the floor, then stumbled off deeper into the shuttle.

"Here," Drift said. He wrapped the thermal blanket Ratchet had left lying on his berth around his shoulders. Drift sat down facing him, a blob of white and red against the gold of the cargo bay's interior. "I don't know what to do," Drift admitted.

"There's a hospital that treats mechanicals, two days flight," Ratchet said. "I can guide us there. But they're going to need a sample of the venom to synthesize the antagonist."

"Okay." Drift put his hand on Ratchet's shoulder and lingered for a moment. Then he climbed back to his feet and stepped up to the airlock. "Rest. I'll be back. I needed to grab my things anyway."

The airlock doors hissed open and closed and then he was gone.

Ratchet kept time on his internal chronometer.

By ten minutes he could almost see, except that the visual processing rate was still so low that everything rendered as frozen frames on a second delay. By seventeen minutes he could move his left arm again, well enough to wrap the thermal blanket back around his shoulders where it'd fallen down.

By forty minutes he could scoot himself to the cabin of the ship, though he still couldn't stand up. Once he had access to the mobile medbay he ran a pair of fuel boosters through his isolated lower arm to flush the system again—after a twelve minute delay to get back the fine motor control to get the damned cap off the booster. He also finally got a neural blocker in his arm, cutting the pain down to blissful silence. The medical readouts showed that Drift was right, the venom must have been corrosive. The walls of the fuel lines were thinning and near breakthrough in places and the wound itself was still growing, slowly. He didn't have a chem lab to analyze the compound and it didn't respond to any of the stock neutralizers he had on hand.

By two hours and fifteen minutes he was considering the possibility Drift had just cut and run. He managed to drag himself to the pilot's seat and get the solar shielding lowered, but the viewscreen was facing away from the Seething. If Drift wasn't going to come back with a sample, it would probably be best to go as soon as possible, hope the chem lab would be able to get a read off the fuel he'd flushed through.

There was the distinctive hiss of airlock doors opening and then a clatter. Ratchet tried to push himself up, but his legs still weren't cooperating. "Drift?" he yelled. "You alright?"

He had the door to the cabin propped open, so he could see when Drift stood himself up at the end of the hallway, leaning against the wall. He had what looked like an old energon canister in his hands, and he raised it up triumphantly when he saw Ratchet looking.

»Got you a live one.« Drift staggered down the hallway, one hand guiding him along. »I really hope you can fly us there.« He set the canister down on the berth with a clank.

"Drift, what happened?" Ratchet asked.

Drift flashed him an apologetic smile, dentae smeared pink with fuel. "I think I messed up," he rasped at Ratchet, before dissolving into a fit of coughing. Pink fuel dripped through his fingers onto the floor. Drift hit the floor before Ratchet could get to him, coughing subsiding a moment before his optics sputtered out and his knees folded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love comments so feel free to tell me anything. You can also find me on tumblr at [ notwhelmedyet](http://notwhelmedyet.tumblr.com/), though I'm mostly on discord and/or working on writing lately


	2. Iredem Medical Facility

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a race against time to save Drift's life...and to figure out what he's done to get himself poisoned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been a long time coming. A long time. Sorry about that. The short version is that I needed to figure out what happens in the _next_ chapter before I could finish this one and that took longer than expected because I took a month off to make [a Drift costume for Flamecon 2018](https://notwhelmedyet.tumblr.com/post/177416100709/drift-cosplay-with-choomchoom-as-ratchet-at). But we're back, finally! Hopefully it hasn't been so long that y'all forgot where we were.

In general, Ratchet was in favor of unconscious patients. They didn't ask questions. They didn't complain. And, best of all, they never attempted to make small talk while you were attempting to do delicate microcircuitry work.

In fact, the only problem with an unconscious patient was you couldn't ask them what the slag they'd _done_ to themselves.

Stabilizing the patient came first. Ratchet got Drift up onto the slab and hooked into the diagnostic equipment so he could monitor his spark and internal temperature. The results were disquieting.

There was no source of direct spark support in the fold-out medstation on the shuttle, so Ratchet got Drift hooked into his reboot coils and hoped. Once Drift's spark readings started leveling out, still low but not guttering, Ratchet started looking for the bite. It was so obvious what must have happened: Drift dove back in to find Ratchet a sample of the venom and got poisoned in the process. He always had to play the hero. Ratchet never should have let him.

But there was no bite, no sign of a puncture mark anywhere on the outside of Drift's plating. But the poison was so clearly the same. Ratchet puzzled over it for a moment, brain still feeling fogged from his own recent brush with near-shutdown. Absently, he brushed a trail of bright pink fuel off of Drift's lip from where it had seeped out.

Ratchet paused. He rubbed his fingers together, the motion a little unsteady with his left hand, felt out the viscosity of the fuel on his fingers. _Not right. Too sticky._ And why the hell was Drift coughing up fuel when Ratchet hadn't? It could be a dosage issue but...frag, he had a bad feeling about this.

Ratchet shifted so he was facing Drift on the berth, unhooking his reboot coils to get a better look. He gently lifted the back of Drift's helm so his head was elevated and used his aching, half-useless hand to probe at Drift's mouth. His teeth had clenched shut when he fell offline, a normal autonomic response. Ratchet levered his finger in between and pulled them open.

Fuel gushed over Drift's bottom lip, spilling down his chin in a wave of hot pink slime. Ratchet cursed and tipped Drift a little further forward to let enough of the seepage to drain for him to see what was going on. He juggled his bad arm to support Drift and rearranged his legs so he was kneeling out of the splash zone while he unfolded his good hand to get the penlight out and looked around inside.

The inside of Drift's mouth was blistered and oozing, pink fuel weeping out of a patchwork of open sores. His glossa was the worst of it, soft plating practically neon and pitted. Shining his light to the back of Drift's intake, Ratchet could see more fuel there, swirling with black flecks of corroded plating. Drift was drowning from the inside.

Purging out a mech wasn't a new procedure to Ratchet, but he was grimly aware of the survival rates for mechs who'd inhaled Gideon's Glue and similar vesicants. He got a neural linkup and keyed into Drift's medical protocols to ensure he stayed offline during the operation, too heartsick to handle Drift waking and panicking under his hands as he tried to save him. Then he got off the berth and folded Drift chest-to-knees so there was a downwards slope between his fuel tanks and his intake. Ratchet fumbled Drift's chestplate open one-handed and got out a transfusion cable to drain Drift's primary fuel tank, then fed a feed line down his intake to draw out from the reserve tank. He tipped Drift's head a bit to the side and used a mouth prop to keep the drainway open, piling absorbent cloths under his cheek to catch the overflow.

Fans roaring, Ratchet heaved himself to his feet. He staggered to the berthroom, barely keeping upright, and got the infuser case open. He untapped his spare energon canister and dragged it back to the cabin, where he rigged up a feed into Drift's primary fuel pump. He stepped back and let himself breathe for a minute, external fuel pumps an out-of-sync cacophony. The buckets he'd laid out as catchment were slowly filling with grey-swirling fuel, flecked with foam and bile. Ratchet ran through his notes on Gideon's glue again, and then again, looking for any step he might have missed. But there was nothing more to do until at least three full fueltanks had been flushed through the system.

Ratchet sat back down on the floor beside the berth and hooked Drift back into his readouts and booster cables, letting Drift's spark ride off of his. He absently rubbed his fingers around the patch on his aching palm, trying to make his mind slow down so he could figure this out, falling into the lead-lag rhythm of the external fuel pumps around them.

 _Fuel pumps._ Drift had flushed out Ratchet's arm by pulling the fuel out with a suction fuel pump and allowing his own fuel to replace it. _Where had he found a suction pump?_ Ratchet had been so overwhelmed and in pain that he hadn't even thought to question it...Drift hadn't spoken during the transfer, not even once. He'd claimed there was one of those Sunstrikes in the area, but he'd seemed so guilty when Ratchet was scared by that. He'd run off immediately afterwards, to get the rope, or so he’d said...and he'd been so quiet on the journey back to the ship. And uncoordinated, a thing that Ratchet should have noticed was strange; Drift had been so graceful navigating in low gravity before the attack.

There hadn't been a suction pump, then. Drift, stupid, slagging, idiotic, self-sacrificing Drift didn't have a suction pump stored in those tiny hip compartments. He'd gone back to his roots and siphoned the contaminated fuel out orally. For Ratchet.

And now he was paying the price. For Ratchet.

There were things he needed to do, things he could do to keep his mind off of that. He plotted in a course to their destination—the Iredem Medical Facility—then called ahead to confirm with the dispatcher that they were equipped to handle toxicology cases. He explained the situation and confirmed that they had a sample of the creature in question. Two days flight to get there as fast as the shuttle could take them; he promised to call back and update the dispatcher on Drift's situation once they were closer.

Then he cleaned up the shuttle, shuffled out back to the cargo bay and found Drift's stuff where he'd dropped it, a pile of swords and a loose bundle of possessions Ratchet didn't unwrap, just carried straight to the spare berthroom. Between each slow trip, legs still uncoordinated and laggy, he stopped back at the berth to plug in and check Drift's vitals. He gathered up the thermal blanket Drift had wrapped him in, the one he'd taken from Drift's room after his exile, and hugged it to his chest. Then he walked it back to the cabin.

When there was nothing else left to do he prepared a bowl of warm solvent and knelt down in front of the berth and carefully wiped any traces of contaminated fuel off Drift's face and neck. He took Drift's loose hand in his and cleaned off the splattered fuel. He leaned his head forward to brush his helm against the back of Drift's hand and shuttered his optics.

"Don't you dare," he whispered. "Not like this."

The timer pinging got him back on his feet and back in motion. He switched off the fuel pumps, checking the flow meter to make sure that three tanks worth of fuel had been flushed through. Pure flushing wasn't going to do anything more for Drift, any remaining poison would be what had permeated through the inner surfaces of Drift's lines and tanks. Ratchet had no way to slow the reaction, the slow dissolving of Drift's internals. Either Drift would make it through till they got to the hospital or—

It was up to Drift now. Ratchet righted him, climbing up onto the berth so he could more comfortably keep connected to Drift's diagnostic ports. He retraced his steps through Drift's medical protocols and disabled the temporary lock he'd put on his sleep-wake cycles. _Drift wouldn't want to slip away offline._ While he was in there, Ratchet went ahead and installed a neural blocker so Drift wouldn't be in pain when he woke. He pulled the thermal blanket around their shoulders and settled in for the waiting.

Of course Drift didn't wake in that soft and gentle moment. He woke up several hours later, with Ratchet's hands in his chest, trying to patch a leak in his fuel tank that was letting fluids out into the interstitial space around his sparkchamber.

Ratchet knew his patient was awake when he startled under his hands, and Ratchet’s grip slipped on the delicate gossamer patch he was trying to place. "Drift, stay still," he ordered. "Or you're going to be leaking into your spark in a minute."

Drift froze and Ratchet went back to work. He got the patch in place and swabbed over the surgical site with disinfectant.

"Ratch?" Drift rasped. He sounded small.

"I've got you," Ratchet said. "Almost done."

He got Drift closed up and stepped away to wash off his hands.

"What's happening?" Drift asked.

Ratchet clenched his hands into fists and resisted the urge to snap any of the things waiting on the tip of his tongue. He forced himself to relax his hands. Through the viewscreen he could see the starscape shift around them, tiny pinpricks of light in the dark. He schooled his voice into his best medic-delivering-bad-news monotone. "The venom you ingested permeated into your soft plating and internals. It's continuing to corrode inside of you. We're on route to a medical center, but the only thing I can do is patch the holes as they break through."

Drift coughed wetly, then whispered. "Is your hand okay?"

Ratchet slammed his hand against the door. "You're dying, Drift! Worry about yourself for once in your life!" The noise echoed in the small space, echoed for too long. Ratchet eventually had to look over at Drift.

He was lying on the berth facing Ratchet, looking thin and exhausted, but there was a half-smile on his lips. "That's what I have you for," he whispered. "I'm so tired, Ratch."

Ratchet walked back over and brushed the back of his hand against Drift's helm. "That's your body trying to keep up with repairs. Just rest."

"I'm cold," Drift complained.

Ratchet picked up the blanket and shook it over Drift, letting it settle over his head. Drift wiggled a little and poked finials and then his optics out from under the blanket, staring at Ratchet. "This is mine," he said.

"Yeah, you left it behind. Scoot." Ratchet said, stepping over Drift to sit on the berth with his back against the wall. He nudged the blanket aside for a moment and hooked himself back in, HUD flashing with Drift's medical readouts.

Drift, wrapped in his blanket cocoon, rolled until he bumped up against Ratchet's legs. He looked up at Ratchet over the blanket, snugged up to just below his optics.

"What are you looking at?" Ratchet grumbled, checking Drift's temperature against his hand again, even though he had his diagnostic cables plugged in and could have read it off his HUD to six significant figures.

"Gonna fall asleep. Less scary if you're here," Drift whispered. Then his optics flickered and stuttered out as he sank back offline.

 

* * *

 

"Don't leave," Drift begged. "Don't leave me."

Ratchet looked up helplessly at the waiting doctors and began to prise his arm out of Drift's sudden limpet grip. "Drift, Drift, calm down," he soothed. "I'm not leaving you here. They need to take both of us into surgery to reverse the poison."

The message clearly wasn't getting through. Drift had been less coherent each time he'd woken, each time Ratchet was forced to open him up and attempt some hackjob repair. He'd been inconsolable since Ratchet announced they were docking at the hospital. "His neurological system is overheating and he's got a hospital phobia," Ratchet tried to explain. "Just...be gentle, okay? Drift, you've got to let the doctors help you."

"Only you," Drift begged.

"I can't. I'll be there when they're done, I promise. I'm not leaving you."

Drift clung harder. The doctors, near-identical mechanical sorts with fragile-looking spindly limbs, hung back safely out of the splash zone of the hallucinating Cybertronian. Drift was hanging by a thread but it was a slagging _tenacious_ thread, wasn't it? Ratchet sighed, then knelt down by the berth. "Drift," he said. "You're going to go to sleep for a bit. I'll be right here when you wake up, you won't feel a thing. Do you trust me?"

Drift blinked at him, optics glassy and barely there. "Yes."

"Okay, good. I'm going to help you sleep." Ratchet ported back in, his fingers shaking. Drift wasn't really consenting, he knew that. Drift _couldn't_ consent now, not in this state. He'd known they'd have to go to the hospital back when he'd first gotten Ratchet to the shuttle, back when he'd been lucid. it was the best Ratchet had to go on. He used an EM pulse to push Drift back into unconsciousness.

He disconnected and stood back up, looking around at the room full of staring doctors. "Well?" he said. "Go on. Have you got an antivenom synthesized yet?"

"Yes." One of the medics stepped up next to him, consulting a holographic datapad. "You're the other patient, correct? Come this way, I'll lead you to the surgical suite."

Ratchet glanced over his shoulder as they went, medics suddenly swarming the room, flicking lights on and starting up monitoring equipment as they went. Drift would be fine—Iredem Medical had a great reputation according to the local reviews. He wished he could have done the operation himself, but...

"Are you experiencing any pain in the affected limb?" the medic asked as they settled him onto his surgical slab.

"Oh. Not really, I cut off sensory input from that side of my body after it happened."

"You can—well, could you please restore that so you could describe your pain to me?"

Ratchet shrugged. "Yeah, sure." He deactivated the neural block and then promptly passed out.

 

* * *

 

 

The very friendly receptionist was explaining to Ratchet what sorts of mineral supplements were important to take to reverse line-thinning during recovery. It was sweet, in a _this person did not listen to a single word I told them_ , kind of way.

"—and it's important to remember to exercise your limb after surgery. You might experience some soreness from the burns on your sensornet, but a regular set of exercises will help minimize that and help you regain your full range of motion."

Ratchet nodded, pretending to pay attention and looked around the waiting room for any sign of Drift. He'd only been under for a couple of hours, Drift probably wasn't out yet. He gave the kid a few more minutes to wrap up their spiel and then gave them his best publicity smile, the one he hadn't practiced since Nominus. "Thank you, for everything. The mech I came in with—is he still in surgery?"

"Hmm," the receptionist frowned. "What name would they have checked in under?"

"Drift of Rodion. Cybertronian. I can give you his serial number if you need it? We arrived together."

"No, that's alright, name is fine. I'm sure we don't have two patients under that name..." the receptionist tapped at the air, squinting at the screen down below their desk. "Ah." They frowned. "Your friend is out of surgery and has been moved to a recovery room."

"Great." Ratchet said. "How do I get there?"

They rattled a sigh. "Are you related to the patient?"

"I don't know if you've met a Cybertronian before, but we don't really do _related_. Isn't this a mechanical-only medical center?"

"Right. Well, in that case I can't allow you into the isolation wing to visit. You can remain here until your friend is released into the main recovery ward or I can set up a message alert for you?"

"Well why the slag is he in the _isolation ward_?" Ratchet demanded.

"If you're not a relative, there's nothing more I can tell you."

Ratchet crossed his arms and sighed. _Well, time to be an asshole._ "Is there someone else I could speak to? Your supervisor, for instance?"

The supervisor was almost identical to the receptionist, as far as Ratchet could tell. They gave the same speech about relatives and Ratchet explained again, very calmly, that "relatives" in the sense they were using it didn't _exist_ on Cybertron.

"Well, for security reasons we can't allow non-relatives to visit patients in the isolation ward. I am very sorry for the inconvenience," the supervisor said, fluttering their pink wings in apparent distress.

Ratchet opened his mouth to say something that'd get him thrown out of the place and then stopped. "Is there an exception for sparkmates?"

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Oh, sorry, universal translator issue. Um, life partners? Conjunx endura? Spouses? Is any of this coming through for you?"

"Oh—legal family members!" The receptionist said.

The supervisor whipped around to glare at them, then turned back to Ratchet, awkwardly fixing a strained smile on their face. "Are you claiming that you and our patient are legally bonded?"

Ratchet smiled. "Oh yes. He's my conjunx endura. Can I please go see him now?"

"Well, how am I supposed to know you didn't just make that up?" The supervisor said, squinting at Ratchet. "Do you have some official documentation of this?"

Ratchet shot the mech a horrified look. "Official documentation? You just...publicize your sparkmates? Primus," he said, dragging out the first syllable in his best Drift impression. "I don't know if you know, but we were at war for a very long time. Members of the military were discouraged from publicly taking sparkmates." Ratchet explained.

"So you have no evidence?"

"I don't need to _prove_ my love to you," Ratchet spat, crossing his arms across his chest and glaring at the supervisor until the moment was broken by a sudden beeping noise.

"I’m getting a call," they said, lifting one hand to their helm. "I’m very sorry, I'll be right back." They hustled away, tottering on their stiletto spikes. Ratchet and the receptionist stood there in silence for a long moment as the quiet waiting room pretended it wasn't listening in on the entire conversation.

Ratchet wasn't quite sure if he was playing it up _too_ much or if he hadn't yet gone far enough. He'd never been much of an actor, but it wasn't like he could just leave. He had to do something.

Hopefully Drift would play along. Hopefully Drift would be lucid enough to play along. But if not, once Ratchet got in a room with Drift he wasn't letting them get separated again.

"Are you really...married?" The receptionist asked.

"Conjunx endura," Ratchet corrected.

"But isn't marriage for organics? You know, to form child-raising units?"

Ratchet snorted. "You ever get off this station and see some other planets, kid? There ain't just one type of _anything_ , let alone relationships. Your conjunx endura is your partner, the person who you promise a part of yourself to."

"But you don't make children," they protested.

Ratchet gave them his driest look. "You're a mechanical too. Are you telling me you don't know what love is?"

"Neimad!" The supervisor called, tottering back over to them and waving their arm. "We’re to send him up."

The medic at the counter frowned and said "But—"

"Neimad." The supervisor rapped their knuckles against the counter. "I've got this from him directly." The supervisor turned back to Ratchet and spread his hands appeasingly. "Of course we wouldn't stop you from visiting with your spouse. However, if you visit the isolation ward you won't be able to leave until we can verify you aren't carrying any technopathogens. For health and safety."

"Is that why Drift's there?"

The supervisor looked over at the medic behind the counter. "Neimad?"

"Um, yes," Neimad said, ducking their head down as they read the notes. "It says the automated sensor system picked up an unknown technopathogen, patient was removed to recover in the isolation ward to avoid infection of vulnerable patients in the main recovery ward.”

Well, that seemed plausible. Drift had certainly been running about who-knows-where, probably getting up close and personal with all sorts of weird aliens. Ratchet hadn't picked anything up in his scans, but he hadn't been looking for alien pathogens. "Okay," he said. "I'm ready to go now."

"Now?" The medic behind the desk asked. "Don't you need to go, um, get your stuff?"

"Neimad!" The supervisor hissed. "I'm sorry, I can show you to the bridgeway to the isolation ward."

"Naw, the kid has a point. Is there anything I should bring for our stay?"

"Outside gifts and belongings are not permitted inside the isolation ward, as Neimad certainly knows," the supervisor said. "I'm sorry for the interruption. Shall we?"

Ratchet raised a brow at the supervisor. Bit of a complete 180 there, personality-wise. Ratchet had hoped the lie would get him inside, but he hadn't expected it'd get people scrambling like this. But he let the supervisor lead him out of the waiting room and down to a brightly lit corridor, semi-translucent walls revealing lush golden foliage in glass cases. At the end of the corridor there was an elevator.

"Wait here, one of the ward staffers will take you the rest of the way. I've paged ahead for you—unfortunately I'm not permitted to travel between wards and risk cross-contamination, I'm sure you understand."

"It's fine," Ratchet assured them.

The supervisor turned away, throwing one last look over their shoulder at Ratchet. Weird fellow. Ratchet waited for a bit, watching the condensing droplets run patterns down the inside of the hallway glass until the elevator opened.

It was empty.

Ratchet stepped inside and rode the elevator up to what he assumed was the right floor. The door opened on a spartan hallway with low lighting and walls made of interconnected grey plastic plates. Ratchet had never heard a hospital that quiet.

He wandered a little way aways from the elevator, hunting for a floor map or a intercom button, something to find his way to Drift. His search was interrupted by the clatter of heels on the hard flooring and someone calling his name.

It was another opalescent pink mech, indistinguishable from the medics Ratchet had seen downstairs. He wondered if they were all that color, their whole species? Or perhaps it was just their way of signifying medics, the way the Autobots had settled on red and white.

"I’m sorry," The medic said with a slightly frantic wave of his hands, “I just got the call that you were coming up.”

Ratchet snorted. “Just lead the way.”

The medic gave him a sidelong glance. "Right. This way," the medic said, clearly not one for words. The place seemed entirely empty, no nurses or patients wandering the hallway. Ratchet wondered how big this wing was.

"Looks different than the construction in the rest of the facility," he commented.

"Built to handle emergency response to an technoplague in local space two hundred years ago," the medic replied. "It was recently purchased and interconnected with the main facility by management."

"Ah," Ratchet said. “You know, I don’t think I caught your name—I wish you would all wear name tags; you look identical.”

The mech, who’d been humming discordantly under their breath, paused. “We do not,” he protested.

“You really do,” Ratchet said. “At least to me.”

They looked skeptically over at Ratchet; then a smile spread across their face for some reason. “Iveq, I’m the orderly for this wing,” they said. “And I’ve definitely been walking us in the wrong direction, sorry. I get turned around in here all the time.”

Ratchet couldn’t blame him—he wasn't sure if he could have retraced his steps back to the elevator and they'd barely been walking for a few minutes. All the walls were completely bare, all the intersections unmarked. A _horrible_ design for a place that might at some point need emergency evacuation.

"Here you go," the mech said, pointing at a nondescript door. "He'll be through there, I’ll call his attending doctor and have them meet you." They swiped their wrist over a keypad by the doorway and the door hissed unlocked. Job apparently done, they walked off without showing Ratchet in.

"Thanks," Ratchet said and pushed the door open.

The room was dark. Beyond dark, there wasn't even an indicator light on the medical equipment inside. The only way he knew Drift was in there was the distinctive pattern of biolights, lit a whelmish dull. That and the distinctive sound of a mech's fans rattling in panic.

Ratchet swung back out into the hallway and yelled at their retreating back. "Iveq, get back here!" He toggled on his IR display and turned back to the room.

They had Drift restrained, pinned to the surgical slab: ankles, wrists and neck. Drift was obviously awake, pulling at the ties holding him down and arching up away from the berth, trying to escape the tube someone had fed into his throat and left there. Drift was white hot in IR, fans near failing as he overheated in his panic.

Iveq must have flipped on the lights, because Ratchet's vision suddenly blurred and doubled. He threw his hand over his optics as they adjusted, throwing himself blindly to Drift's side. "Why the _fuck_ is he restrained?" he yelled over his shoulder as he tried to pull at the tie on Drift's wrist.

"I don't know!" They yelled back. "I’m just the orderly!"

"Well, do something useful and get these off of him, and then call me his attending because I have someone to murder," Ratchet said, abandoning the effort of pulling the cuffs off. Either the mech could unlock them or he'd cut Drift out.

He laid a hand on Drift's cheek, wet with coolant. "Hey, I'm here," he said. "It’s me. I'm going to get you out in a moment."

Drift's optics locked on his and he stopped struggling, fans still roaring and he obviously tried to suppress his panic. Ratchet used his thumb to smooth away the coolant running down his cheek, "That's right, that's right," he murmured. Conscious of his audience and desperately hoping Drift would play along, he said, "Okay, sweetspark, I'm going to get this thing out of you."

The intubation line was too wide a gauge for any legitimate medical purpose Ratchet could think of, except maybe direct fueling into the reserve tank. "What's this for?" he asked the orderly, startling them.

The bot shrugged. "Fueling, right? I'm sorry, I don't—"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, you don't know anything. Well, let's hope you're right because it's coming out."

"Shouldn't you wait for—"

"Didn't I tell you to do something useful?" Ratchet said. "Okay, Drift, optics off. It's better if you don't watch this bit."

Drift stared up into his optics, some expression there that Ratchet couldn't quite read. Then his optics flickered and dimmed. Ratchet patted Drift's shoulder reassuringly, then ported in and installed a sensorblock so Drift wouldn't have to feel the cable coming back _up_. Gently, he gave the cable a little tug, testing for any resistance. Feeling none, he drew it out, coiling as he went.

When the end of the line passed Drift's lips Ratchet threw the whole thing to the floor. Drift curled in on himself, the useless medic apparently having freed him while Ratchet was concentrating. Ratchet moved aside to let them key open the last restraint around Drift's neck, keeping a reassuring hand on Drift's back until the medic moved their hands away from his throat.

"I'll just go and fetch them, then," the medic said, rubbing their hands together. "I am so sorry, I don't know what they were thinking."

"Clearly they _weren't_ thinking," Ratchet said, shoving Drift's legs out of the way so he could hop up onto the berth. "Shoo, bring me back someone I can yell at."

The door closed with a solid click, leaving them alone. He helped rearrange Drift so he was leaning up against Ratchet, clearly still unsteady in his limbs after surgery. But hopefully lucid. And not dissolving anymore. Ratchet unfolded his penlight and tapped Drift's jaw till he opened up and let Ratchet look. _Much better—_ white splotches of grafted plating that needed to integrate into his glossa and mouth, but no open wounds. Ratchet put that away and, for lack of somewhere else to put them, wrapped his arms around Drift's waist.

"Can you talk yet?" He asked.

Drift fizzed static, then shook his head. It'd been a longshot. Ratchet had assumed his vocoder would be offline for at least a few hours after surgery.

"Radio?"

Drift pursed his lips and furrowed his brow, like he was thinking very hard or trying to modulate his aura or something. After a moment, he shook his head again.

Weird. Ratchet tried it himself and a strange error message about active broadcasts on those frequencies scrambling outgoing messages popped up on his HUD. "Must be some hospital intercom system," he muttered, though that didn't exactly make sense.

"Ah well," he continued. "At least that means you can't say anything stupid."

Drift glared up at him.

Ratchet laughed. "Speaking of saying stupid things...you should know. I kinda might have told the people here," he leaned close and whispered into Drift's audial, "that we were conjunx endura. Don't be weird about it, they weren't going to let me in otherwise because we “weren't related”." He wasn't sure _why_ he felt the impulse to whisper in the empty room.

Not a bad room, now that he had some light on the subject. A pair of comfortable chairs. When the lights had come on, blinds had slid up to reveal more of that terrarium display there'd been out in the hall. There was a fuel dispenser, though it probably was something lower grade than real energon. There was even a holoscreen in the corner, in case someone wanted to see what kind of vids the people around here were into. He wished he could have gone up to the ship and grabbed some of his stuff, though—the place was painfully sterile.

Drift didn't seem to be taking the fake sparkmates revelation too badly. He didn't _look_ upset, anyway. Ratchet was out of practice reading Drift's emotions—and he never had been that good at it, had he? He'd thought he was, but all the Overlord stuff had just flown right over his head. And given that Drift couldn't talk yet, probably better not to assume.

Too soon, they were disturbed by the arrival of another pink spindly medic.

"Ratchet?" The medic said, offering up a hand. Ratchet considered it and decided he could _maybe_ be bothered to play nice for a little longer, and lifted one of the hands he had wrapped around Drift's waist for the medic to shake.

"And you are?" he asked, very aware of the fact that the medic had just completely ignored Drift. Who was, admittedly, not talking and not moving much and very sleepy looking.

"Leniad," the medic said. After an awkward pause they pulled their hand away and buried their face in their datapad. "I need to apologize, I heard that you were most upset about the care your spouse had been rec—"

"Care?" Ratchet repeated incredulously. "Is that what we're calling it now?"

"We made several clinical decisions the best we could under the circumstances.”

"None of you are touching him ever again."

Leniad winced. "I understand you are upset, but I can explain. When I left, your spouse was unconscious and we had every reason to believe he'd remain so."

"Then why did you shackle him to the berth like a criminal? He couldn't run away if he was unconscious."

"He was combative when he woke during surgery, the attending surgeons were forced to restrain him for the safety of our nurses. We're not built for battle like you are, they were concerned he was going to seriously injure someone. I should have removed the restraints when we transferred him to this wing."

Ratchet tightened his arms around Drift. "I told you—I told someone, whoever was in the room when we got here—I told you he was scared of hospitals and you just—" he growled. "Okay. Let's move on. First things first, I need you to redirect that apology to _Drift_."

Leniad shuffled a bit, then managed to eke out what was barely an acceptable apology.

"That acceptable to you?" Ratchet asked Drift. "Because if you don't feel comfortable staying here, we'll leave."

"You can't just leave!" Leniad protested. "He's infected with a transmissible technopathogen. It's against the law for us to let you leave untreated—both of you. Now that you’ve been exposed to him, you’ll need to be given the same treatment to prevent you from picking up the same infection."

"Mm, well, like you were saying. You're all little and fragile and not made for war. Drift?"

Drift shrugged.

Ratchet groaned and put his chin on Drift's shoulder, a thing he'd seen Rewind and Chromedome, the ridiculous little lovebugs, do to each other. "Sweetspark, that is not an answer. Do you want me to break intergalactic health codes for you or are you cool to stay here and do what the doctors order, as long as _I_ carry out their instructions and nobody else touches you?"

Drift thought it over, and Ratchet started thinking logistics. The medics seemed breakable enough, but there was a lot of ground to cover between the isolation ward and the shuttlebay. If it'd been a groundside hospital instead of an orbiting one his first thought would have been busting out through the walls and circling round in alts, but that wasn't exactly an option. As long as they didn't lock down the elevator, he could probably—

Drift nodded.

"Is that yes leaving? Or yes staying? Wait, I've just confused it again. Nod for staying, shake your head for leaving."

"As I _told you_ , you cannot just _leave_ and if you do not stop joking about these absurdities I will be forced to call for security. Just stop—"

Drift nodded.

"False alarm, doc, we're good here." Ratchet said. "So why don't you lay it on me and I'll figure out how we can carry out your treatment plan for Drift. What's wrong, what's your approach, what kind of timeline are we looking at?"

The doctor stuttered to a halt mid-diatribe and seemed rather to have lost their footing. "Right. Um, one moment, please." They whirled on one stiletto leg and swiped the code to open the door, disappearing out into the hallway. The door clicked closed. There was a faint muffled sound of someone screaming in frustration.

The doctor came back in. Leniad cleared their throat and brought up their little datapad and began scrolling through their notes. "Um, yes. Drift's surgery went well, no adverse reactions to the antiserum. They used a liquid patchwork to fill in the bits of his main feed tube and oral cavity where they'd been eroded. There was some rather more tricky internal surgeries for the fuel tank, secondary fuel tank, fuel pump, some little clockwork bits we didn't quite know what they did but which seemed important. Sorry, you're the first Cybertronians we've had in here."

"I'll do a full scan on you and make sure everything's okay," Ratchet promised. "Most of the fueling system is broadly analogous to mechanicals within the Bipenoid classification." he reassured the medic.

"I'd read as much, glad to hear it confirmed." Leniad skimmed through his notes a bit more. "And then, during our normal post-op scans, we detected a B-class technopathogen, still in its incubation phase. We started treatment with a serum of immunobots, fed orally. Unfortunately the immunobots tend to cause irritation of emplaced plating, so we had to deliver them directly into the fuel tank."

"Why not a direct delivery through the main fuel port? Or the auxiliary?"

"The what?"

Ratchet put his hand over Drift's chestplate, where it was covering up Drif't's main port, then tapped at his right wrist. "Primary fuel port, auxiliary."

"Why do you have three different fueling mechanisms?" Leniad asked.

"Why do people keep asking me dumb questions about "why" Cybertronians are the way we are? I don't know. Tell me more about this techopathogen. Do we know anything?"

"One of a whole host of rare technopathogens, not well understood, hence the immunobots instead of a specialized vaccine. Based on their behavior under the microscope, we're fairly sure they spread primarily through exposed fluids, if you were were ever cut, Drift, or had some sort of puncture wound while in an unsanitized environment?"

Drift winced. Ratchet snorted. "He's a bit of an adventurer, so I don't doubt it. Now, I assume there's probably some side effects to this generic immuno—" he paused for a moment. “Wait, it spreads through fuel?”

"Um, yes? Almost certainly."

"Would there be a period of time before you were able to pick it up in the tests? Maybe a couple of days?"

"That sounds right. Why?”

"Just curious," Ratchet said. _No point in telling them Drift donated a fifth of his fuel to me the other day and that I’m definitely infected. They’re insisting on treating me as a precautionary measure anyway._

 

* * *

 

 

"Okay, now brace your hands against mine and try to push," Ratchet said.

Drift frowned in concentration, glossa poking out between his lips. He shifted his palms against Ratchet's and pressed downward, a faint pressure that barely would have shifted Ratchet's hands at rest. But the application of pressure was smooth, Ratchet observed. Drift's neural connections _were_ healing, even if the frustration of being left kitten-weak was clearly wearing on the mech.

"Okay, that's good," Ratchet said. "Let's test—"

"Good?" Drift groused. "That's good?"

"It's only been a day, Drift, and a fatal dose of neurotoxins tried to melt your circuitry. You're getting back range of motion, your strength will return soon."

"Not nearly soon enough," Drift muttered, flicking his gaze between the corners of the room. "I don't like being here, defenseless.”

"You knew you were taking a risk when you tried to save me—note, I still think it was a _stupid_ risk and that if you'd talked to me we could have thought of a better plan together. But you saved me and that had consequences; taking care of you is my responsibility in every way: as a debt, as a doctor, as your—"

"—sparkmate," Drift interrupted, throwing a significant glance at the vidscreen in the corner that he had posited could double as a listening device. His excuse for keeping in-character at all times.

Ratchet resisted the urge to roll his optics. He squeezed Drift's hands in his. "You could have died. I don't believe in miracles but, right there at the end? When I wasn't sure if you were going to make it the last few hours to get here? This is our best case scenario."

"Right." Drift looked down at their joined hands. "You know, you're the only mech I know who could go on a grand journey to to find someone, get stuck in solitary confinement in a room together for an entire day—"

"Are you sure you know what solitary confinement is?"

"Shush. I'm trying to ask you a serious question, Ratch. You're the only person I know who could end up in a situation like this and go an entire day and not even _bring up_ what's happened back on the ship."

"Lot of things have happened," Ratchet said. "And I’ve got no idea where to start. Do you want me to just tell you everything in order?"

Drift shook his head. "Let's take it slow. I was just thinking—near death experiences and all that—I wanted to ask you about Chromedome. Did he pull through?"

"Chromedome?" Ratchet frowned. "Last I checked he was alive and well—am I missing something? I mean, there's the mnemosurgery, we're all pretty sure that's going to do him in eventually. But he's not dead yet."

"I meant after Rewind...you know." Drift looked away. "They weren't just conjunxes—they were sparkmates. In the old sense of the word. Like they needed each other to keep alight. And thinking that it was his fault—I thought I'd killed the both of them."

Ratchet didn't bother to protest that _Drift_ hadn't killed Rewind. Not worth opening that veritable Iacon Library's worth of issues. "It was a rough few months," he admitted. "We were all worried about him. But then—" he ground to a halt, trying to figure out how to explain what had happened.

"But then?"

"I'm thinking. It gets all complicated, quantum physics stuff I don't understand. But you remember that engine explosion during the initial launch?"

Drift nodded.

"Well, the short version is that when the ship got shunted off course, something-something-physics and a second Lost Light came into existence where we were _supposed_ to have gone. Complete with a full crew. So, um, there were two of all of us for awhile there."

Drift squinted at him. "If this is you pulling one over on me, I want to state for the record that it's not even a very convincing story."

Ratchet shrugged. "Well, it's true. But it’d be hard to prove because everyone—well, everyone on board the other Lost Light—got murdered by the DJD. Everyone except—"

"The DJD murdered you?"

"Um, no. The DJD murdered everyone on board a _duplicate_ Lost Light. I was nowhere near there. I didn't even get to see the ship, something-something-quantum-interference, apparently you're not allowed to be in the same bit of space as a physics-defying second copy of yourself, even if he's dead."

Drift hissed a breath out between his teeth, then stared Ratchet right in the optics. "I would never let that happen to you."

"Um, thanks? I think? Like I said, this is a whole story and I wasn't there to see it, you'd have to ask Getaway or Nightbeat or—"

"Who?"

"New crew members." Ratchet hesitated a moment to see if Drift was aware that Nightbeat was supposed to be dead. Apparently not. He wasn't going to go into it, they were wandering way off the point already. "Anyway, _as I was saying_ , that all doesn't matter because once our ship and their ship got close together they basically cancelled each other out and their ship ceased to exist. Except for Rewind, who didn’t have a duplicate on _our_ ship and somehow didn't get disappeared."

"Wait, so you got Rewind's dead body? I guess that's good, Chromedome was pretty broken up about the fact that there wasn't a body for the funeral."

"No, we got Rewind. He'd escaped the DJD, survived the attack and then survived the ship disappearing. So we brought him on board."

"Right." Drift nodded slowly, looking more concerned than Ratchet would have expected. "How did Chromedome take it?"

"Are you _sure_ you're not having any cognitive issues? Not feeling a little fried up there?" Ratchet reached out and rapped Drift on the helm, cocking his head as if listening for an echo. Drift scrunched up his face at Ratchet and stuck his glossa out at him. "Chromedome got his conjunx _back from the dead_. He was delighted."

Drift boggled at him. "No? He didn't? Rewind died. Then there's this other Rewind, whose Chromedome died?"

"They're both Rewind—and they’re exactly the same up till the launch of the launch of the Lost Light. There was an adjustment period, of course, which was a bit awkward. But Rewind's up to speed on what he'd missed on—" Ratchet paused. Drift looked crushed, and not in a _Ratchet just proved me wrong_ kind of way. "Hey, what's wrong?" he asked. "This is _good_. Rewind's back—not quite the way we knew him, but he's back."

Drift shook his head. "It's nothing."

"Uh-huh." Ratchet pulled their joined hands into thing lap, made a show of inspecting the little dents and scuffs around the joints of Drift's hands. "If you don't want to tell me, I guess I can live with that. It's not a theological issue, right? Some religious objection to the idea of two of the same spark existing?"

"Not that," Drift said. He lapsed into silence. "It's selfish."

Ratchet caught a glimmer of an idea. "Oh."

"The Rewind who died, who I got killed, we were almost friends. He helped me make—he helped me. He confided in me. This other Rewind has never met me. And with him there, I can't even mourn the real—" Drift broke off and shook his head. "Rewind knew something was wrong, you know. He knew Chromedome was pulling away, he told me how much that scared him. I had so many opportunities to do the right thing, but I was so fixed on the idea that I knew what Primus needed of me..." Drift shrugged. "He was alive. And then he died. And now he's been overwritten?"

“That's not what I'm saying. We know that the new Rewind isn't," he hesitated, not quite willing to say that people didn't act like Rewind had never died. It was true that a lot of folks on board didn't understand what had happened with the quantum duplicates. Slag, most of the crew didn't even know what had happened to the first Rewind beyond a vague understanding that he'd died saving the ship from Overlord. He wasn't _totally_ sure how many of them knew that Rewind wasn't like Nightbeat—actually returned from the dead. "The people who were close to him know what happened and of course they miss him."

"As long as Chromedome's okay, I guess that's what's important," Drift said softly.

There was a cheery beeping sound and the door to their room swung open, and Leniad trundled inside with their cart of supplies, humming a tune as they went. "Aww, how sweet," they cooed. "I'm not interrupting a moment here, am I? I could come back."

Ratchet looked at Drift, then over at Leniad. _They weren't doing anything weird—_ okay, so they were both sitting crosslegged on the berth with their knees touching and it looked like they were holding hands, but there had been a therapeutic purpose for that before Drift went and got them both sidetracked. "You're fine," he said.

"Oh, good, I hate to be a bother. How have things been? Any improvements? Any requests?" They hovered off to the side, cautious of straying too close to Drift and getting Ratchet on his case again.

"He's doing fine, we're well on track for his recovery. I haven't noticed any symptoms of the parasite, but it should be dormant anyway. Are you here with our next dose?"

"That's good, that's good. And yes, we're right on time for you to take the next dose. Are you going to self-administer again, Doctor Ratchet?"

"Really, I told you, Ratchet is fine. And you bet I am. Hand ‘em over, you can supervise if you want." He held out his hand, palm up. Leniad rifled through their cart and passed over a single-dose booster. Ratchet tried to pull his other hand free so he could uncap the injector, but Drift held tight to him.

Ratchet tugged on his hand. "What?"

"I don't like drugs."

"I have told you this over and over, Drift. If they're prescribed by a doctor for an illness, it's called medicine. I need my hand back, please."

Drift let go, reluctantly. Then, with a conspiratorial smile, he shifted his hand to Ratchet's knee and gave it a gentle squeeze. "You don't have to be scared of showing affection, conjunx," he said, saccharine sweet. "The doctors here aren't going to judge us for our bond."

"Drift, time and place," Ratchet said, batting Drift's hand away and finally getting the damned booster uncapped. This was clearly Drift's revenge for their impromptu cover story—his irritating attempts to be as lovebug-like as possible. It was damned irritating; he didn't have to be so damned _performative_ about it, Leniad had already bought their story and they'd have kept Ratchet anyway now that his test results had come back positive. But Drift kept giving them the hard sell for some reason.

 

* * *

 

 

Ratchet straightened out his legs with a crackle of too-stiff joints. Drift looked over at him where he was curled up on the berth, optics sleepy and only half open. "We could share, you know," Drift said.

"I'm fine." He crossed his legs at the ankle and leaned back against the back of the chair. He tipped his head back and let his optics dim, not quite ready to recharge but sick of looking at the room.

"I'm not really that tired, we could swap and you could take the berth," Drift suggested.

Ratchet snorted. "You're recovering from major surgery, you need your rest. And, as I just said, I'm fine."

"You could ask them to bring a second berth in."

" _Fine._ I. Am. Fine." He popped one optic on to better glare at Drift. "Plus, they'd probably just move me to another room, isolation wards aren't known for dual occupancy setups. I'm not getting us split up."

"How much longer do you think we're going to be stuck here?" Drift asked. "I'm getting bored."

"Meditate or something. Or you could try the vidscreen. You're not walking yet, so we'd have been here regardless."

"We could share, you know," Drift said. "Last time went alright, I thought. You seemed to sleep fine."

"No, Drift."

"Conjunxes sleep together. That's a thing. That's a thing, isn't it?"

"Not on a berth that narrow they don't."

"You are no fun," Drift muttered sleepily.

“Then why’d you marry me?” Ratchet grumbled.

“Well, it was your idea, wasn’t it?”

 

* * *

 

 

"So how did you two meet?" Leniad asked, wobbling their cart back and forth awkwardly as they waited for the fuel samples to run through the analyzer.

"I really don't think that's any of your business," Ratchet said.

Simultaneously, Drift said, "Oh, I saved his life."

Ratchet glared at him and gave a short shake of his head. _Do not start making up an elaborate backstory for our fake marriage._ Drift just smiled blithely back at him.

"Aw, don't get embarrassed Ratch, it's a good story."

"I'm a private person!" Ratchet said, crossing his arms as he paced back and forth behind the berth. "I don't think every person we meet needs to know everything about my personal life."

"Oh, I'm not going to tell him any of the _salacious_ bits, sweetspark," Drift said, kicking his feet happily as he braced his chin on his hands. "Anyway, yeah, I saved his life. He's a doctor for the Autobots, I'm an assassin for the other side. And I'm there to take out a high level target, but I see a couple of infantrymechs circling round a medic trying to evac out a downed soldier. And he looked up and our eyes met and I just felt this—it was love at first sight."

"Driiiiiiift, don't."

Drift threw him a soppy smile and continued, "I abandoned formation and swooped in to rescue him. Wasn't a very popular idea—we had to fight our way out of a Decepticon strike force and _of course_ Ratchet insisted we had to bring his patient with us. We went back to the Autobot base and, you know, they had to arrest me. Because I was one of the _most fearsome_ Decepticon warriors. But Ratchet vouched for me in front of high command, and they let him take me under his wing—figured it was the best of both worlds, someone to watch his back and someone to make sure I stayed in line."

" _Drift_."

"And then we got together and we had a nice private commitment ceremony," Drift said hurriedly. "Obviously you don't care about the rest of the details."

"I cannot _believe_ you," Ratchet grumbled, walking around the berth to look over at Leniad's readouts. The doctor tipped the screen away from him with a frown.

"Positive again. Should have had a response by now..." Leniad hummed. "Maybe the dosage is too low? I should probably have taken a density sample instead of assuming you'd mirror mechanical averages."

"Oh, no need. I can get that information for you," Ratchet offered. "Me and Drift will be slightly different—he's synthetic SM while most of my components are constructed of sentio metallico proper. There are sometimes drug uptake differences between constructed and forged frames, I should have...hm, well I guess you know now. I've got a lot of basic medical notes stored up here," he tapped his helm. "If you've got a networked datapad that accepts Cy-DD protocol uploads I could send them over."

"Oh yes, that would be wonderful," Leniad said, smiling.

 

* * *

 

 

Ratchet steadied Drift, tightening his arm around his waist as he almost stumbled. "Nearly there."

"Should have just gotten a new body," Drift grumbled, taking another lurching step with most of his weight braced against Ratchet's body. "Never had this much trouble integrating into a new frame."

"Well, that's because those new frames didn’t have fried nervecircuits." Ratchet said. "You're doing fine, you'll be walking on your own in no time."

"Pfft, you said that the day before yesterday. I think." Drift sighed. "I keep losing track of time—wish there was a way to see the sky from in here. Actually, no, scratch that, I wish we could leave this room."

Ratchet considered it. Probably Leniad would say no; the whole purpose of having sealed isolation rooms was to prevent cross contamination between patients with different infections.

"You know what I want? I want a drink," Ratchet said. His hand was cramping up again, but he'd already committed to pretending it didn't hurt any more. And anyway, his sensornet had experienced far less damage than Drift's—it would have been rude to complain while Drift was gamely chugging on.

"You've got an engex problem, you know," Drift said. "You're going to end up like Trailcutter."

"Hey—don't say that."

Drift released Ratchet and caught himself on the berth, throwing a confused look at Ratchet over his shoulder. "Was there a crew meeting I missed? Did we all decide that we were going to take Trailcutter's issues more seriously? Primus, that's good to hear—sorry, you're right. I should use more sensitive language and—"

"No, I mean, he's dead." Ratchet winced. _Wow, Ratchet. Great. Excellent work breaking the news._

Drift said, "Oh," in a small voice. Then: "How?"

"Got split off from the crew during a temporary evacuation, the DJD found him and murdered him."

"Oh." Drift looked away, hands clenching the berth behind him. "I should just ask how many more there are, shouldn't I?"

"Do you want me to—"

Drift shook his head. "I'm not ready. Just—give me a few days."

 

* * *

 

 

"Hey Drift, when do you think Leniad is going to show up?" Ratchet consulted his internal chrono against his log of Leniad's appearances over the past four days. There wasn't a set schedule, but the gap between the last visit and the present was longer than any of the preceding gaps.

Drift shrugged from where he was lying, stretched out between the pair of chairs. "Dunno."

"Maybe one of the other patients is in crisis."

"I don't think he has other patients," Drift said.

Ratchet snorted. "I mean, this place isn't very busy and he's not especially competent, but I doubt he's _so_ incompetent that two patients would make a full caseload."

"I think we're the only ones here," Drift said. "In this whole wing, there's nothing but me and you."

"You cannot _possibly_ have any evidence of that," Ratchet said.

"I can’t feel any other patient’s auras."

"Sure. Right." Ratchet continued pace back and forth between the berth and the door. Twelve steps and a little bit each way, which was irritating. Each round he either had to cut himself short or stretch out that last step a little longer.

Eventually Drift spoke up. "Could you please stop pacing? You're giving the room a distinctly unrelaxing atmosphere."

"I don't have to do everything you want just because you're hurt," Ratchet said, shaking out his hand as if he could get the fragging tingling to disperse. Something didn't feel right. Not in a way he could describe, just...off.

"Jeez Ratchet, no need to be an aft about it. You've been pacing for nearly two hours."

Ratchet said, "Well, I'll stop when I'm done."

Then his body stopped. Froze mid-stride.

Ratchet pulled against it, straining against _something_ that was holding him in place. Behind him, he could hear Drift get to his feet and walk over.

"Ratchet?" Drift said. "Are you okay?" He reached out and placed a hand on Ratchet's shoulder.

Ratchet's body spun, his hand striking Drift across the face and knocking him to the floor. Drift looked up at him, face full of confusion and hurt, one hand pressed up against his cheek.

Ratchet's voice managed to break through. "Drift! I am so sorry, that wasn't me. I don't know what that was, my hand just—"

Drift snorted. "Oh I see, we're playing that game again. Yes, yes, very funny, Pharma's possessed your hands. No need to hit me so hard."

"I'm being _serious_ Drift." Ratchet tried to channel as much sincerity into his optics as possible. "That wasn't me."

"If you say so," Drift said, dusting himself off as he climbed back to his feet.

Ratchet hit him again. This time, Drift just stepped backwards and caught him by the wrist. He glared at Ratchet. "Don't. I'm not in the mood."

"Drift, I'm telling you, it's not me. I don't know what's happening, but it's not me."

"What else would it be?" Drift snapped, reaching out to snatch Ratchet's other hand before it could strike him.

The lights flickered off, leaving the room illuminated only by the golden glow of the glass terrarium. As Ratchet watched, something oozed down the inside of the wall, oil-viscous, blacking it out. Gold light shone through the only uncovered parts of the wall.

It spelled out _Commencing Control Saturation Test._


	3. Iredem Medical Facility, pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, are/were you at TFcon? I am very jealous - hope you had a great weekend! If so: have some more robots! If not: have some robots!
> 
> Even though it's tempting, I'm going to resist the urge to continually apologize for how long updates take on this story because I'm pretty sure it'd get boring for y'all. Needless to say, I wish this was getting written/edited/updated faster but unfortunately my work & brain are not in agreement.
> 
> About this chapter: if you read the previous chapter and felt like it was about your limit for medical/body horror, you might want to give this one a miss. If you read the first scene and then skip ahead to "There was a crashing noise" you'll be set up to read chapter four and that'll be fine. I'll add a brief description of the chapter content in the end notes.
> 
> Everyone else: prepare for some gross creepy stuff (and yes, _obviously_ I timed this to be published for Halloween )

The words formed from the massing shadows were the only lights in the room except their optics. The letters shifted with the motion of the plants inside the terrarium. _Commencing Control Saturation Test._

"Who _are_ you?" Drift spat, losing his grip on Ratchet's arm and ducking to avoid another blow. "Ratchet, resist it! Whatever it is, fight back!"

"I'm trying!" Ratchet said. He was dragged forward by his frame, which was apparently intent on slugging Drift.

The words were swallowed by the darkness, plunging the room into shadow, before reforming into a new message. _Patient Thirty-Seven Control Saturation. Stop Test._

Ratchet fell backward as the force that had been resisting him abruptly lifted.

_We Require A Specimen For Further Testing_

_Are There Any Volunteers_

Ratchet and Drift locked eyes.

His mind started racing. Had the hospital been taken over? Was whatever was trapped in the terrarium sentient? Was _that_ what was threatening them? Or was this a set-up—was the whole hospital in on this? What did they mean "further testing"?

"We're getting out of here," Drift said, limping over to the door. He reached out towards the control panel and froze, arm outstretched.

The room plunged again into darkness. Then the black ooze spread apart to form the words _Patient Thirty-Six Control Saturation_.

"Ratchet!" Drift said, voice shaking. "I can't move."

The previous message restored itself, the lights falling right across Drift's face. Ratchet could see the fear in his optics.

_We Require A Specimen For Further Testing_

_Are There Any Volunteers_

Ratchet made a snap decision. He hoped he wasn't about to regret it. "You want me. Leave Drift."

"Ratchet!"

"You want to study us? You want a _specimen_? Then you want me. I'm forged—I'm a _true_ Cybertronian. Drift's a knock-off; made in a factory of subpar materials. If you want a model of how the Cybertronian body is supposed to work, I'm the one you want."

Drift's optics widened with shock and what was probably hurt. He'd understand. He'd forgive Ratchet.

 _You Really Do Love Him._ The letters scrawled across the glass, then melted away. _Very Well, Doctor_.

"Ratchet—don't do this," Drift begged. "Don't do this."

"It's me or you, Drift," Ratchet said. "And I'm not going to let anyone hurt you."

_Say Your Goodbyes, Specimen Thirty-Seven_

"I will kill you," Drift bit out, even as his body began moving stiffly away from the door. "If you hurt him I will kill you."

"Drift—" Ratchet wasn't sure what he wanted to say, only that this might be his last chance to say it. His body pivoted towards the door, head locked straight ahead, Drift sliding out of his field of vision. The door grew closer and closer as his feet carried him, unwillingly. "Drift, you've got to get out of here."

The door slid open, revealing the unremarkable hallway beyond.

"Not without you!" Drift yelled.

Ratchet stepped through the door. It slid shut behind him, sealing away Drift's voice.

The hallway was utterly silent except for his own footsteps, echoing against the hard floor. He strained against the pressure holding his arms at his sides, the irresistible force moving his legs forwards. From the corner of his optic he could see little security cameras along the seam of wall and ceiling, pivoting to watch him as he went. _Someone_ was watching this, ergo there was a person who’d done this to them. And whatever they'd done, they'd done it with science and it could thus be undone.

The isolation ward was a maze and he was carried deeper and deeper through its identical hallways. It was utterly empty of life: no doctors, no patients, no sounds. Had Leniad been killed or captured like Drift and Ratchet? Or was he in on this? Was he what was awaiting Ratchet?

Eventually, he stepped up to a door, unremarkable as any of the rest. His fingers sought out the keypad and pressed in a combination he didn't know. The door slid open.

It revealed the room Ratchet had almost been expecting. A magnetic surgical slab on a pivoting base. A sluice drain at the center of the sloping floor. Surgical arms mounted from tracks on the ceiling, security cameras in every corner. He could feel his spark pounding as he moved to the slab.

Nothing good could come of a place like this.

His arms lifted to stretch out to the sides, his feet shifting to shoulder's width. One of the ceiling tracks started up with a whine and the arm mounted on it rolled towards him. It met the circular track above Ratchet's head and began to circle him. Ratchet wished that exposure therapy to being taken hostage would have blunted the edges of his fear. But wishing had never done anyone any good.

With a hiss, the surgical arm began to mist him with a spray that burned against his plating. The droplets popped and fizzled, boiling off in a wave of heat. It circled around him until every part of Ratchet had been soaking wet and then burned clean again. The air was acrid with chemical disinfectant.

When it finally stopped, he heard it slide away. Everything was a blurred smear, his optics weeping as his body stepped forward and turned to settle itself against the cold metal of the surgical slab. The slab magnetized with a clank and then pivoted up in a tank-churning rush. Lights overhead powered up to full intensity, throwing what felt like an entire sun at Ratchet's burning optics.

The room went still and silent again. "Hey," Ratchet said. He wasn't sure if anyone was monitoring the room for sound, but it was worth a shot. "You don’t have to do this.”

No response except the rattling of the overhead tracks. A blurry shape came to a stop beside his helm. "If you _told me what you wanted_ I could help you," Ratchet said. "I'm a doctor. Whatever it is you're trying to figure out, I probably already know the answer."

A pinprick of pain pierced the soft plating at the back of his neck and Ratchet shut up. They didn't know mnemosurgery, they _couldn't_...something ice cold hit his sensornet, turning the pain into something wobblier.

Finally, the thought got through—if the spray had been disinfectant, the next step of surgical prep was to sedate the patient so they didn't struggle. Whatever they were using to keep him immobile seemed like it ought to have done enough...but he could feel the foreign substance flooding through him and relaxing his wire-tight nerves against his will.

Through the deepening haze it was easier to wait for whatever was coming. He sank into it like a Legislator's body into the depths of the oil reservoir.

He hoped Drift would find a way to escape. This had to be Drift's worst nightmare, held captive in a hospital. All his fault. He should have noticed the red flags. The way the receptionist had seemed to try to scare him away from following Drift into the Isolation Ward. The lack of other patients. They should have run when he first suggested it, when he’d found Drift tied down in that dark room. He'd known something was wrong and he’d ignored it.

There was a whirr of machinery and the surgical arms converged again on the berth, blunt three-fingered claws running gently over his plating. Ratchet would have shuddered at the sensation if he could have moved, but the iron grip on his motor control extended even to that. The surgical arms moved randomly, it _seemed_ randomly from his loosening grip on reality, sliding up and down limbs and tracing out plating seams and joints. Then, as one, they lifted away.

A single breath of pressure returned, right along the seam below his chestplate. Three claws pressed up against the seam, feeling the resistance. They backed away with a whine, arms moving around in synchrony, casting elongated spider-like shadows over Ratchet's dazed optics. One arm passed something to another, then to another, then they slowly slid back into position against the seam beneath his chestplate. Something razor-thin but wide pressed into the space of the armor seam, then wiggled to the left and right in a sickening slide. The tool slid smoothly to one side and then to the other, tearing open the seam and sending Ratchet's sensornet into disarray. Two more claws were already in place to jam their blunt fingertips under the lifted edge of his chestplate and lever it up.

Sedation or not, Ratchet's ventilation system kicked into a lurching series of involuntary heaves. That was not how you removed the armor plating. There was hot fuel running over his abdomen in rivulets and the absence of pain was leaving more space for his sensornet to work itself into hysterics.

"Wait," he slurred. "Wait, stop. Don't do it like that."

They didn't listen to him, prying his plating up in little testing jerks.When it wouldn't pull free, another pair of surgical arms swooped in on each side and the familiar heat of a laser scalpel sliced through the seam like a hot knife through lead. His breastplate was lifted away, leaving his underlying plating cold and fragile feeling, internals only one thin layer away from the open air. Fuel was still bubbling up from the torn seams and the surgical arms blotting at it were only succeeding in smearing it around. "Shock the capillaries closed," he slurred. "They need to cauterize themselves."

The whirlwind of motion around him paused.

"Electric shock will trigger the nervecircuits to start rerouting the smaller energon conduits," he tried to explain. "Sedation prevents the normal response from the sensornet."

They could hear him. Whoever they were, wherever they were, they could hear him. And they were _listening_.

One of the arms wheeled away, to the corner of the room outside his field of vision, where there must have been supplies tucked in some sort of integrated or hidden storage. It returned with a narrow wand that, when pressed up against the leaking seam, triggered a short pulse of electricity. The sensation was strange but not painful and Ratchet could see the cauterization alerts finally start popping up on his internal readouts.

"Whatever you want," he tried again. "I know I can help. You're not trying to straight-up kill me, right? There's something you want to _learn_."

Apparently they weren’t interested. The surgical arms started back to work, feeling out seams in his plating, zipping between the wall and the surgical slab. Then they retreated again, leaving a single arm feeling out the ridged armor over his midsection, edging out from the circular center plate over his primary fuel port.

"Don't," he said, voice sinking down into an undignified whine. "Don't do it."

The laser scalpel couldn't dig deep enough to get through the thick armor in one cut, retracing and retracing the seam around the center plate, ducking back and letting the surgical arm with the zapper cauterize each cut. Ratchet could feel when it finally pierced the outer armor into the gossamer plating below, couldn't help the involuntary noise of disgust he made. The surgical arms paused in response, then moved back to let another set have room to shove their fingertips into his internals.

He was babbling something incoherent by the time they'd flayed the armor from him, draped open on either side. Whatever they were using as a sedative clearly _wasn't fucking working_. The dreamlike gauze over reality hadn’t lifted but was twisting into some inchoate nightmare.

By the time the arms had finished opening him up he felt like he'd spiraled off to another plane of existence.

They hadn't fully stripped him down to his endoskeleton, but they'd opened up every piece of accessible plating and peeled it back, removed every piece of integrated armor below the neck, left his internals open to the cold air. And now they were tapping at the spiraled protective casing over his spark chamber.

Ratchet would have just opened it, if he could have done anything. But no, these dumb faceless tools were going to rip through him like a sparkeater through a cyberfox. They pawed at it ineffectually, trying to get their little shims under the interlocked plates. But the outer spark casing was built to resist invasion. Eventually they retreated and Ratchet waited for their inevitable return with something to cut it open.

Instead, the arms suddenly pulled back up towards the ceiling, trundling to the outside corners of the room before drawing still.

Ratchet tried to collect enough of himself to make words work again in this brief reprieve, but hadn't managed to pull together a sentence before the door to the surgical suite slid open. He recognized the noise—his optics were now so attuned to the blinding light that was blaring down at him that he was only catching motion and shadows.

Stiletto feet walked slowly to the surgical slab. Ratchet caught a glimpse of arms swathed in glittery protective fabric, probably some sort of radiation protection. Fingers, much more delicate, pressed up against the spiral of his spark casing, teasing out the release catches at the edges of the plates. It took a few minutes for them to unlatch them all and sweep the fanned plates out of the way, and then Ratchet really was bare to the world.

 _This isn't as bad as what Pharma did_ , he tried to reason with himself. _You've still got all your internals. Your lifecord is still in your body. You just weren't conscious for this part with Pharma._ But he couldn't help feeling more vulnerable now than he had then. Pharma...he'd known what Pharma wanted. Revenge. Pain. Simple concepts to understand. And he'd been _Pharma_ —twisted and stretched from the mech Ratchet had known, but still a known quantity. This was just the abyss: someone or something whose goals he couldn't fathom.

“Have we met already?” he panted. “I’m sorry, you lot all look the same to me.”

The figure walked away and returned wheeling a small cart.

“Not a conversationalist? I can empathize. But really, if someone would just tell me what you _want_ I could help you.” Unless they wanted him dead or stripped for parts or turned into a bomb as part of a terrorist plot or any number of other horrible ideas that popped into his head every time he tried to guess at their goals.

They reached into the mass of fuel lines around Ratchet’s fuel pump, sliding against each other as they sifted through with their hands before lifting out a narrow feed line. They steadied the fuel line with one hand as they pushed a long needle into it and drew out a sample.

“Is that Leniad? Iveq? Seriously, the molecular composition of active energon has been analyzed in hundreds of studies. Stop wasting everyone’s time.”

They didn’t take his advice; Ratchet decided to stop wasting his time by trying.

When they were done and had set aside the sampling syringe they didn’t emplace the fuel line back in its position. Instead they used a hook on the underside of the slab to stretch it out against the metal. Ratchet's ventilations shuddered with wrongness. He just wanted to be in pain. He wanted the pain to be strong enough to send him offline.

Next the hands reached down within again and pulled out another fuel line, hooked it outwards. Methodically they pulled each line out and uncoiled it enough to hook it to the outside edges of the slab. When Ratchet was on Earth he'd seen a picture of a butterfly, a little gossamer creature, pinned to a board and squashed flat under a display glass. He felt like that, twisted inside out and pinned on display.

They used another needle to draw a sample from one trapped loop. Then another. If they wanted to analyse the difference in fuel compositions between different parts of the fuel circulation system Ratchet had peer reviewed studies he could have given them.

Finally the mech abandoned playing with Ratchet's internals and circled around to the side of the slab, beside Ratchet's vulnerable spark casing. They brought their hands close and then they hesitated.

They spun on their heel and strutted off towards the door, stiletto points clicking against the floor.

And then they left. They fucking left, with Ratchet split open and spilling out in all directions. Ratchet found himself getting irrationally angry before he remembered that _avoiding_ the people that wanted to experiment him was the actual goal. Nothing fatal was happening yet and they'd pulled back from touching his spark. Good. Maybe they'd track down Leniad and read through that medical data Ratchet had given them, save everyone a great deal of effort.

Time crawled in that unsteady haze. His spark banked down into his frame and his ventilations evened out. Opened up like this he wished desperately for that thermal blanket he'd stolen from Drift, the cold seeping down into his exposed struts. The silence was absolute, he would have sworn he could hear the fuel moving in his lines.

The surgical slab's magnets powered down with a sinking hum. Not that it would do Ratchet any good, he still couldn’t—

Ratchet found his arm moving, not of his control. It slid up his frame, hovering just above his exposed and raw sensornet and inner plating, before settling at the collar piece at the base of his neck. There was nothing under there but neck cables and the awful machines hadn't bothered to touch it. Softly, strangely, gently, his own fingers reached out and splayed over the flat plane of the collar piece. Then they began to draw little figures on it, scrawled from one side to the other.

They drew back to the first side and repeated themselves and only then did Ratchet realize it was words. Misformed and clumsy, but words.

_I'm sorry_

_I'm sorry_

_I'm sorry_

Ratchet spoke, barely a whisper. "Please, let me go."

The hand froze and moved away from his neck, back to its place at his side.

"Please," Ratchet whispered.

The magnet reactivated with a hasty _clunk_ as if it’d never been gone.

Ratchet tried to figure out what had just happened. Someone was out there. Someone who could control him. The way they'd retreated when he'd spoken, it was like they were afraid of being caught. Maybe there were multiple people who could operate the controls of whatever they were doing to him and at least one of them was sympathetic. Heck, maybe it was Leniad. There had to be someone in this freakshow that wasn't a sadist.

Maybe, whoever they were, they couldn't let him free yet because it wasn't safe. Maybe soon they'd be able to reveal themselves. Maybe. Maybe. He felt an entirely unmerited rush of hope that he couldn't seem to push down. Maybe they'd already helped Drift escape.

His chrono told him that twelve standard hours had passed when the lights blazed back on again, a bare minute before the door again hissed open. Click-clack stride and a swirl of opalescent fabric told him the torturer was back again.

"Good morning," Ratchet tried. "Hope your night was better than mine. Bit drafty in here.”

No response, but Ratchet hadn't exactly expected one. "You know, any time anyone wanted to tell me who is doing this and _why_ , I would be very grateful."

The mech stepped up to the berth and pulled their cart close with a jerk that jostled the torture implements stored within. They reached aside into the cart and drew out a laser scalpel. Ratchet kept quiet, not liking the way what the blade was moving towards his spark. Best not disturb the disturbed mech putting a blade to your spark.

Well, they managed that, at least. The flat of the blade rested against his spark casing; then they froze again.

"Oh, come on," Ratchet said. "This again? Look, not to be rude, but this is taking forever. Do whatever it is you’re here to do and go, you fucking coward."

They jerked their hand away from Ratchet and the laser scalpel fell to the floor with a clatter. They ducked over to pick it up, wobbling on their stiletto feet.

"Hey, are you okay?" he asked. It was a stupid question, but there was something in his brain pinging _wrong_ —and not in any of the obvious ways.

They walked away from Ratchet and his surgical slab pivoted slowly to follow them. His optics took a moment to adjust, blinding circles floating hazy over the figure. They raised their left hand and slashed the blade over their palm, splitting the glove and the hand underneath. Then they turned to the wall and began to write, hot pink fuel garish against the wall's clean surface.

_Tell Specimen 36 To Behave_

Ratchet's spark crumpled, even before the mech began to strip out of their radiation protection—their disguise—revealing familiar red and white plating.

Someone had welded a pair of points to match the local doctors onto Drift's heels, forcing him up onto the very tips of his feet. When he pulled away the mask he revealed a neck that had been mangled, neck cables pinned aside to reveal a vocoder ripped free and dangling from loose wires. Drift stared at him, optics wild.

"Drift," Ratchet said.

Drift shuddered, a full body convulsion that rippled up his frame in time with his optics flickering. _How the hell _was_ he resisting that?_ Ratchet hadn't quite figured out how the controlling was being done, but all of his attempts to resist it in any way had led to absolutely naught. Whatever Drift was doing, he was clearly bare minutes from shorting out his spark from the effort.

"Drift, I need you to listen to me. Stop resisting!" He ordered. "You're going to burn out."

Drift locked eyes with him and shook his head. If Drift could talk, Ratchet could just imagine what fucking _idiocy_ would have spilled from his vocoder: _I'd rather die than hurt you_.

"If you die you will hurt me, you idiot!" Ratchet yelled. "And then they'll get someone else in here to do it for you! So _stand down_!" More quietly, he let himself spill what he'd wanted to say before he'd left Drift in that room. "I need you around, okay? Don't you dare die on me."

Drift's optics cut out and he folded into a heap on the floor.

"Drift!" He yelled. "Frag you, let me go to him. Drift, wake up!" He pulled against the implacable grip on his frame, heedless of the fact that he was still magnetized and pinned open like a corpse in a dissection lab.

Cold flooded his spark as he looked over Drift's stiff frame. He'd lost him. This was his fault—if they hadn't gone to this hospital, if Ratchet hadn't insisted they stay, if he hadn't insisted on them being separated. How much of a fool could he have been to believe they'd just leave Drift be? And of course Drift would burn out on something entirely pointless, trying to stop a violation Ratchet had already endured.

He caught the sob in throat and forced it into a growl. "Of all the stupid, wasteful things in the world. Fuck you! I loved him and you—I can't believe you—"

Blue lights. Drift's optics sputtered back on, low luminosity, but there. Still burning.

"Drift—you're up." He tried to control the break in his voice. "Let's keep it that way. The amount of power you're pulling to resist their control is unsustainable. Use your brain. We need to play for time."

Drift rose to his knees, then to his feet.

"Good. Come over here, I don't bite."

Drift walked back up to the side of the berth, put one hand on the cart, hesitated.

"Drift, look at me. Fuck you, make him look at me."

Drift did and they locked optics.

"Drift, I'm not afraid," _lie_ , "and I won't blame you for anything you do." _Truth_. "I've survived worse than this from worse people. I don't know if I could do what you have to, but you _have to_. Until you can escape. Promise me you won't kill yourself resisting."

Drift stared Ratchet. One of his optics flashed gold.

Had Drift just _winked_ at him? That was definitely an acknowledgement. Or a signal. Ratchet wasn't sure what it was a signal _of_ but it had definitely been meant as a signal.

Drift reached into his cart and and got out some sort of radiation monitoring probe. He returned to the surgical slab and pumped at the floor controls, raising Ratchet up to meet him. The light overhead bloomed into a supergiant, hiding the details of Drift's face from him, leaving him as a shadowy figure reaching into Ratchet's spark cavity.

"If you're trying to plant a monitoring probe to test how much energy the spark releases in response to stimuli, the best place to put it would be under the collarplate," he suggested lightly. "That's where I would normally mount it, keeps it out of the way while you're working."

Drift did as Ratchet suggested. Good, that meant whoever was up there was listening. "Spark stimuli tests can be useful, but you need to be careful. If you rupture the spark there's no going back. So be _delicate_." He'd leave off the detail that spark stimuli tests were pretty much only performed on braindead patients in the course of pre-mortem autopsies. Well, that and torture. It was popular for that.

Something poked at the very edge of his spark casing and the corona flared angrily in response. Drift wasn't even touching the corona itself and Ratchet could feel the _wrong_ aching from the back of his optics to the bottom of his feet. The sedative was covering up most of what should have been excruciating pain but nothing could dilute the tank-churning wrongness.

_You've gone quiet, say something before Drift freaks out again._

"This isn't so bad, you know. Last time I had someone poking me in the spark he did _not_ bother with painkillers." _Ack. Maybe don't say that. Maybe not that._ "Which I hadn't meant to mention. Forget I said that, Drift. Just forget that whole sente—" Something pushed past the inner corona and Ratchet lost a minute.

He lurched back and tried to cover it up. "Woah, startled me there. You okay? I'm fine, by the way. Never been better."

No response, no motion, no way to see with the fragging lights blazing in his optics if Drift was still with him. "Drift?"

He'd never been so glad to have someone jab a scalpel into his spark before. There was no way he was fooling Drift, but he gamely kept up a stream of vaguely coherent chatter until it stopped.

"Is that it? I could keep going, but if you're tired, that's fine too," he mumbled.

Drift reached inside and lifted out the monitoring probe. There was a brief pause and then the click-clack of heels moving away from the berth.

Ratchet realized abruptly that this might, again, be the last time he saw Drift, but couldn't think of anything to say before the door closed again and left him alone.

He tried to fill the time by poking at the various mysteries, but didn't get far. There just wasn't enough information. The system of control—either it was actual possession or physical control of the body. Ratchet was leaning towards option B because "possession" was on his list of "magical thinking that doesn't really exist". Of course, the list of “magical thinking that doesn’t really exist” had been getting shorter and shorter since he joined the Lost Light.

If it was physical they needed a means of control. Which meant they were probably talking remotely controlled nanomachines: like bioengineered scraplets. Introducing them would have been easy—they could have been slipped into any of the injections Leniad had—

Scrap, he was an _idiot_. There never was a parasite, that was a cover story to get them to let Leniad inject them with the control nanomachines. Which meant Leniad _was_ in on it. Heck, that meant the entire _hospital_ was in on it—no chance this was a single doctor gone rogue and the rest of them might come to the rescue when they realized something had gone amiss.

That maybe answered the "how" question, but it didn't get Ratchet anywhere closer to the "why". Maybe this was one of those awful organic-supremacist organizations Megatron had been paranoid of in his later works: the sort that were so horrified at the idea of mechanical life that they'd strip a mech down trying to find any explanation that proved that they weren't "really" alive. That they were merely incredibly convincing simulacrums of life.

But the hospital was run by mechanicals; that didn't make any sense. Maybe every doctor there was being similarly controlled...but no, they were obviously real doctors. They'd cured Ratchet and Drift, they'd synthesized the antivenom and completed major surgery with no problems. In fact, the medical care in the main ward of the hospital had been exemplary. Ratchet had only run into weirdness when he got to the Isolation Ward. Which led him again to think that the problem had to center around Leniad.

Having run himself into another mental wall, Ratchet tried to let the time pass until Drift's next reappearance. He couldn't seem to force himself into powersave mode, some side effect of the sedative they were using, but he could dissociate.

Entirely by accident, in the process of watching and rewatching Drift's gift he'd picked up on some of the meditation techniques Drift used. They weren't really so challenging _or_ religious when you got down to it—he just focused inwards on some part of himself that was in motion. Most of Ratchet's internals were things he didn't want to be mindfully contemplating, but his chrono felt safe. The interlocking wheels, all ticking along in their own perfect microcosm of miraculous machinery, the way the nanoseconds danced up the sensor relays to update his chrono readouts...it was the part of his body he had the easiest time sinking down into. There was maybe a little irony in losing time in the rhythm of his timekeeping organ, but there was nobody to judge him for running away from his problems but him.

He was startled out of his absorption by the click of the largest wheel, the one that was calibrated to a single Cybertronian stellar day. He pulled back to his chrono readout and found that, yes, it _had_ been most of a day since Drift had been and gone. He was feeling a bit thin, no fuel in most of three days and a huge amount of strain on his autonomic repair systems. Hopefully there'd be fuel soon. Hopefully there'd be Drift soon. Ratchet didn't think Drift had escaped—someone would have come to see him. But he couldn't think of any other less terrifying possibilities for the long delay, so he sank back down into his chrono and tried to keep his panic contained.

Another click of the primary passed without Drift's return. Ratchet could feel his brain becoming more and more restless, _needing_ to recharge but unable to succumb. He tried to counter the decline by pulling himself tighter and tighter, expending as little mental energy as he could.

A hand on his face and he was back. At some point the lights had dimmed and he struggled for a moment to focus through the haze and tell if Drift was back. But no, it was the other mech he'd been thinking about lately.

Leniad.

"Oh good, you're not dead," Leniad said. "I was worried."

"Were you?" Ratchet growled. "Couldn't tell."

Leniad shrank back. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to do it, any of it. He's got me under his control too, you know. The only way he lets me free is if I do everything I'm ordered."

"So it was your life or mine?"

" _Yes_ ," Leniad said. "And I'm sorry, I'm selfish."

"Is that what you said to the thirty-five "specimens" that I presume preceded me?"

"Yes." Leniad looked off to one of the security cameras in the corner. "Please, I've not got much time. I'm here to offer you a deal."

"And what is it that you have that I could _possibly_ want?" Ratchet said. "You just said you’re not in charge."

"It's not me offering the deal. It's _him_."

"Go on then. Entertain me."

"If you answer my question, he will allow you and your lover to refuel."

"Not a very good offer," Ratchet said. "Maybe I'd prefer to starve."

"But you wouldn't prefer for Drift to starve."

Ratchet glared at the ceiling.

"It's a limited time offer. If I don't know more we'll just have to guess. And if you die, there's another waiting Cybertronian in the wings..."

Ratchet missed being able to move his mouth when he yelled at people. It wasn't necessary, as per say, but it was so much more satisfying. "I've been threatened by the best, you know. This is kind of pathetic. Sending a lackey to insinuate murder threats when I've got my spark open and you've got a room full of torture devices. At least put some effort into it."

"I don't want to hurt you."

Ratchet laughed. "Oh, Drift might buy that, but you're going to have to try harder with me. So what is it you want to know? What didn't I cover in the information I already gave you?"

"The interaction between the spark and the fuel system," Leniad said instantly. "It doesn't make any sense."

"What do you mean "doesn't make sense"?"

"The fuel in your body is changed from a low energy to a high energy state and that somehow infuses the ability to move into the rest of your body. But _ _how__ is the fuel changed from the low to high energy state? The spark? But then what fuels the _ _spark__? It's like a perpetual motion machine."

"If you wanted to have this conversation you should have gone to Drift. That's getting all religious about it. The reaction that fuels the spark _is_ used up, it just is used up so incredibly slowly that it doesn't appreciably decline in observable timespans. As for the fuel, it's not complex. Energon enters into the reserve fuel tank and is pumped into a series of contact galleries, where it's converted into _active energon_ by the energy from the spark. That feeds back into the primary fuel tank and into the circulating energon the body needs."

"But _how_ does it work?"

"I'm really not that kind of doctor. It works." Ratchet did _not_ want to get into the competing academic camps on Spark-Energon interaction.

"And then it's this reaction between radiation from the spark and the energon that allows for Cybertronians to live forever?"

"What."

"You're classed by several intergalactic species taxonomies as having "no known natural lifespan"."

"That is very different from _lives forever_ ," Ratchet said. "For one thing, we absolutely age. Sparks dim over time. Frames grow weak. The mind begins to accumulate errors and bit decay. We just haven't seen many deaths from old age because we've lost too many to war."

"Some mechanical species live only a few hundred years."

"Well, that's a horrible tragedy, but that doesn't make us immortal. Look, if you want to talk about "Immortal Cybertronians" you really should talk to Drift—maybe you should put his slagging vocoder back in."

Leniad ignored him. "Well that wasn’t a very good answer, but it would be inconvenient if you died before we completed the experiments. I’ll see about getting fuel for the both of you."

"Leniad—don't walk away yet. I need to know something."

"I've been ordered to report back directly," Leniad said.

"What does he want? What is all of this for? Is there an end goal here?"

Leniad hesitated, edging towards the door. He glanced again over at the camera in the corner. "He's going to cure death."

And then he was gone.

"That is the stupidest thing I've heard all week," Ratchet informed the empty room.

 

* * *

 

When he next roused himself from the haze Drift was at his side, holding a cube of energon to his lips. Ratchet tried to roll his neck and caught against the nanomachine's hold.

Drift slid one hand under the base of his helm and used it to tilt Ratchet's chin up, look of intense concentration on his face.

"Drift, are you..." There was no mistaking that body language. This was _Drift_ , himself.

Drift gave a shallow nod, and bumped the cube against Ratchet's lips. Ratchet felt his jaw slide open and Drift began to pour, little sips of energon that felt transcendent, paced slow so his body didn't lose airflow.

When the cube was empty, Drift slid his hand away, letting Ratchet's head lean back against the surgical slab.

"Are you okay? They haven't hurt you—" _more_?

Drift blinked at him, then set the glass aside with a clink. He pointed at himself and then waved his hand dismissively, then pointed emphatically at Ratchet.

"That wasn't the question. Have they let you fuel? Are you having any spark pains from your collapse—"

Drift pointed at Ratchet again, then gently touched his fingertip to Ratchet's lips as if to quiet him. He lingered there for a moment, then reluctantly lifted his finger away and stepped back. He held up his hand and made a few forms of what was definitely chiro. Of course, Ratchet couldn't read chiro and Drift knew that—how inconvenient that all of Drift's forms of subtle communication were flying right over his head. If they survived this somehow he was going to make Drift teach him all his stupid codes.

"That doesn't help me, Drift, what are you trying to say?"

Drift glitched, limbs tensing for a moment as if he'd forgotten how to stand, then coming back to a neutral position that was _so_ neutral as to be obviously puppetry.

Drift lifted a needle from the cart, so impressive that Ratchet could still see it in silhouette against the surgical lights. He steadied the needle with his other hand and brought it to rest against the translucent channel of innermost energon encircling Ratchet’s spark.

"Oh. This again."

"Nice and steady," Ratchet instructed, "innermost energon is highly flammable." The needle slid home in a familiar axis-tilting sensation. There was no natural drain for innermost energon—it was meant to stay close to your spark forever. Every donation he'd ever given, voluntary or not, was an intrusion against the body's natural order.

The sensation triggered an immediate rush of indistinct sensory memories: acrid smoke, ozone and spoiled energon, fuel bubbling up over his hands and tracing paths like spiderwebs.

Drift pulling the tip of the needle free from his innermost energon chamber broke him out of his reverie. Clear liquid pooled out of the pinhole and hardened, the membrane sealing itself closed.

He set the needle aside and then fell back into that neutral position at Ratchet’s berthside. They waited for something to happen. Or at least, that’s what Ratchet was doing.

There was a sound just outside the door. Through the glare of the overhead lights, Ratchet would have sworn Drift's optic flared gold for a bare second.

Then door slid open and Drift collapsed again.

"Drift!" He couldn't see anything, damn it, he couldn't _see_. What was going on?

A click-clack of heels hurried over to where Drift had fallen. "Oh dear," Leniad said. "Whatever happened?"

"You know as much as I do," Ratchet growled. "Is he alive?"

"Give me a minute—yes, he's alive. Damn it, I don’t understand why this one keeps collapsing. You Cybertronians are surprisingly fragile."

"Oh, for sure. Super fragile, very mortal, basically useless as science experiments. You should let us go."

"I've told you, I don't have any control over what _he_ decides to do. I was just picking up the sample and dropping off some supplies." Leniad stood back up and walked to the corner of the room. "Neurex Saturate usually has a rousing effects on your lot, right?"

"Do _not_ just inject a patient who's fallen unconscious for unknown reasons with stimulants! What medical academy did you fail out of Leniad?"

"He isn't my patient, he's my ticket to avoiding an imminent and gruesome death, as long as he _behaves_."

"Just give him a minute." Ratchet tried to think. Drift was up to something, he had to play for time somehow.

"We're on a time table." Leniad said grumpily.

"Why don't _you_ do whatever it is Drift's supposed to be doing?"

"Unshielded spark radiation is strong enough to cause my electrical systems to spontaneously degrade. That's _why_ w— _he_ decided to use Drift as his hands for this investigation."

"But you're so valuable that you're worth keeping around."

"That is quite enough time _wasted_. I'm administering the Neurex Saturate."

"Why does Drift have to be awake anyway? If he's just being jerked around under remote control, why does it matter if he's awake or not?"

"I could suggest _your_ voicebox be removed as well," Leniad said.

"So is that a "can't control people when they're unconscious" or "we're all sadists in here after all"?"

It was probably the former, but Ratchet wanted to see if he could goad Leniad into giving something away. He was pretty sure the mech was more of a collaborator than they were letting on, whatever the mysterious mastermind had done to them. But it'd make sense that—if the nanomachines were rerouting and corrupting sensornet signals—they wouldn't be able to operate if there wasn't a flow of motor signals to corrupt. He'd seen nanoviruses take over cyberfoxes using a similar mechanism.

Leniad ignored him and knelt out of Ratchet’s limited line of sight. What Ratchet would have given for access to inter-Autobot radio so he could ping Drift and warn him.

"There," Leniad said. "That should wake him up. I want you to know that you are both _far_ more trouble than you're worth," Leniad climbed to his feet and flounced away to the door. "And I intend to tell _him_ that as soon as I see him."

Once Leniad was gone, Ratchet resumed trying to talk to Drift. He couldn’t tell what was going on—either Drift was offline or Leniad wasn’t back to the controls to get him upright. He was pretty sure Leniad was the one doing the actual puppeteering for medical procedures and there had to be some sort of control room where they were doing that from. If Ratchet was right, it'd take him a few minutes to walk there.

Sure enough, after a few minutes of silence, Drift rose to his feet and walked ominously over to the new supply cart Leniad had left. Ratchet wanted to ask questions, but there was no way for Drift to answer him. And if they were being monitored, he didn't want to give away whatever Drift was planning.

"So, what now?" Ratchet asked to fill the space. "More of the same?"

Seemingly in response, the the rollers up above began to whirr and the surgical suite converged on the surgical slab. He could see Drift in silhouette pick up what looked like a long length of translucent cabling. He passed one end of it to the clawed attendants and fed the other end into what looked like a gun.

Drift set the muzzle of what Ratchet really hoped wasn't an actual gun against the membrane over his innermost energon conduit.

The biopsy corer punched out and back, extracting a circular section of membrane and then pushing the cabling into the hole.

"Woah, maybe we don't want to—" Ratchet started, before being interrupted by one of the surgical claws swooping in to cover his mouth and muffle the sound. It wasn't like he needed his mouth to speak, but he was very aware of the gaping hole where Drift's vocoder should have been. He took the hint.

Drift lifted the gun away and began to slowly push the cabling into Ratchet’s innermost energon conduit.

Ratchet didn't have the motor control to curl in on himself, pass out, or even _flinch_. But apparently he _did_ still have the motor control to reject the cube of fuel Drift had just helped him drink. It came rushing back up, was trapped by the hand clamped over his mouth and flooded back into his parallel airline. Ratchet spat panicked static, unable to cough or turn or let his body follow through on any of the instinctive responses to clear the airline.

The claw at his mouth turned his head to the side and his jaw fell open. Drift was there—cold Drift, wrong Drift—and he fed a suction line down into Ratchet's airway, an intrusion that would have had Ratchet emptying his tank _again_ if there'd have been anything left in it. But it did manage to clear out the airway.

And then that asshole left it running halfway down his airway, blocking him from saying anything.

Drift went back to the horrorshow he was making of Ratchet's chest. Inch by inch, he forced the tubing into the reservoir of innermost energon. Then he punched out another hole with the biopsy corer and began fishing around inside with a pair of forceps. He snagged the end of the tubing and dragged it out through the hole.

When he was done, there was a length of  of transparent tubing coiled around Ratchet's spark, floating in the reservoir of innermost energon.

He didn't have long to wonder what all that nonsense was for because Drift started carrying supplies to the other side of the surgical slab, hooking things up, running tubing into equipment Ratchet couldn't see below the level of the slab. Then the motor kicked on.

Something blue and cold pushed its way through the tubing, up and into his chest cavity. The intrusion crept through his innermost energon, like a shadow on his spark, then pushed out the other side and out of his line of sight. He hadn't thought he could feel more sick, but then the realization of what the mystery liquid had to be hit him like a lead weight.

Blood. Organic blood. There was someone's blood inside of him, being pumped through his chest cavity.

It was only the suction line down his airway and the nanomachine's iron grip on his motor control that kept him from immediately turning into an _outwardly_ hysterical mess. Everyone was spared the indignity of that, at least.

When he'd viewed Drift's present—it hadn't been the same thing as actually _experiencing_ Drift's memories. Repeated recall had softened their edges, remembrance had made them into something easier to live with. And the act of recording and recollecting had given everything a distance—it just wasn't the same. But this— _this_ —was the first time in his life he'd felt anything like the absolute fuel-curdling revulsion at his own body he’d felt in Drift at the Relinquishment Clinic.

Oh, frag, Drift. He'd let himself forget that this was _Drift_ they were making do all this. When he'd offered himself up, he'd been thinking how many of Drift's worst nightmares were about medicalized torture and abuse. He hadn't been thinking about this awful possibility and how many of Drift's other nightmares were about being good at only one thing: hurting people. He needed to say something to him but he couldn't fragging talk—which was probably for the best, he had no idea what anyone could say to make this alright.

The puppeteer didn't break their hold on Drift, keeping him at attention by Ratchet's side. So Drift stood there and Ratchet lay there and let alien blood ooze through his body. Time stretched thin.

But then Drift was at his side, hands fluttering over his face. He pulled the suction line free with trembling hands and threw it aside, leaning over Ratchet and blotting out the light above. Drift's whole face was a mask of fury.

"Sorry I—" Ratchet’s voice sputtered and he started again. "Sorry I got you into this. Should have checked the hospital reviews more carefully."

Drift glared at him.

The glare didn't really match the soft hand stroking the side of his helm.

"I'm still proud of you even though this is—this is really fucking weird. Outlast the bastards. Get away as soon as you can."

Drift must have heard something in the distance, even though Ratchet couldn't hear a damned thing, because his finials perked up and he threw a glance over his shoulder at the door. He turned back to Ratchet and slowly, deliberately, flared one optic gold.

Then he stood up and stepped back.

"I don't know what that _means_ ," Ratchet complained.

The door slid open as Drift collapsed to the floor. Again.

"Oh for pity's sake," Leniad complained.

"Maybe he's allergic to you," Ratchet suggested.

"I thought we'd finally shut you up."

"Eh, got better. Aren't you going to check on him?"

"I've really got better things to do. There's sample results to analyze."

Leniad scooted over to the surgical slab and fiddled with the pumping equipment, flipping a stopper somewhere that drained out all the lines running through Ratchet's chest. He lifted out a cooler, presumably full of irradiated blood.

"I'm pretty sure that stuff would kill an organic," Ratchet said.

"That's why it requires further analysis."

"Either it did nothing, you’ve made radioactive blood or you’ve killed off the blood cells. It's definitely not the secret to eternal youth. I can certainly see why you all didn't have any luck with your first 35 victims."

"I'm sure you enjoy making yourself sound superior over there," Leniad said, "but I might remind you of our relative places in the world."

"Yeah, sure. You're a incompetent sycophant for some organic idiot with more money than sense. And I'm too old for this shit."

"I think when he gets back up I'll have your little sparkmate tear your vocoder out. I'm getting tired of listening to you. Till then!" Leniad turned on their heel and started towards the door.

There was a crashing noise somewhere outside the door and the overhead lights abruptly cut out. At the same time, Ratchet felt the nanomachines holding him fall dormant—not that he could get far while magnetized to a surgical slab.

He turned his head towards the doorway, dimly illuminated by the yellow glow of emergency light strips. Leniad was there, frame reflecting gold as they lifted their communicator to their face and said, "Front desk? Is there some sort of power—"

Something bowled Leniad over at waist level, sending the communicator flying. The medical gurney skidded to a halt, followed in a flash by the tiny human who'd been pushing it. She vaulted over the gurney and threw her elbow into Leniad's optics with a crack.

"Where the hell did you come from?" Leniad shrieked, reaching out for the slight figure. She danced away from him and looked straight at Ratchet. She winked.

_Oh._

Drift's holo avatar skipped backwards and blinked out of existence. Drift stepped forward into its place and put his fist through Leniad's faceplace. The mech fell limp and Drift grinned over at Ratchet. »You were right, they are remarkably fragile.«

 _Radio?_ Ratchet tried pinging out and found that the bands of interference that had been there before had disappeared. "What is going on, Drift?"

»Sorry it took so long to arrange our escape« Drift lurched over to the gurney he'd used to take down Leniad and shoved it up against the surgical slab. He leaned heavily over the gurney, venting slowly.

"The energy expenditure to interact with physical matter in holomatter form is a real strain on your spark, you know."

»Figured that out, actually.« Drift looked Ratchet over. »Gonna need to do it again though, I don't have enough fine motor control back to free you in root mode.«

"If you wanted to explain what was going on, at any point," Ratchet suggested. "I am utterly in the dark."

Drift materialized his holo avatar again, this time closer to Cybertronian scale. In the dim light Ratchet couldn't make out all the details, but his avatar seemed thinner. Drift found a control panel on the wall and deactivated the slab's magnetism. "Short version? The control signals were being carried by radio waves. It took me awhile to locate all the transmission stations but then I smashed them."

"Are you sure you got all of them? They might have a backup somewhere."

Drift growled. " _No_ , I'm not sure, which is why we need to hurry." He looked Ratchet over, shoulders slumping. "Ratch, I'm going to need your help figuring out where to start," he said. "Primus. Primus, this is a mess."

"Right...get this damned needle out of my neck first, I need to think. There's nothing done that I can't fix myself, but we can't wait for that."

"There might be other people here. I don't know. And I don't know what I'll do if there are," Drift admitted. "I feel...weak."

"That's because you've been overexerting your spark basically _continuously_. You're doing it again right now."

Drift shrugged and pulled the needle. "Would you be safe to transport if I can just get you—um—detached from everything?"

"Not ideal but we can work it. Are there clamps on one of those carts? Just clamp off the lines through my chest before you cut me free."

"Got it," Drift said. He worked in silence, clamping off the lines to Leniad's nightmare boxes and slicing Ratchet free with a laser scalpel. Next he turned to the mess of fuel lines hooked over the edges of the slab. "Primus, this is gross."

"Gross? Did you just say it was _gross_?" Ratchet said indignantly as Drift tried to shove his fuel lines back in his chest cavity.

"Yes, I'm wrist-deep in your internals, that is _gross_ ," Drift snapped. "What do I do about everything else? Ratch, are you sure you're safe to move with all your plating opened up like this?"

Ratchet vented slowly and finally let his spark casing spiral shut. He felt instantly warmer. "It's not going to kill me. Grab my chestplate, I like that one."

Drift squared up next to Ratchet and gave him an entirely ineffectual push. Ratchet snorted. "Well, this rescue is going great."

"I'm trying, okay?" Drift snapped. "Someone had to do something, you were just going to lay there and let me kill you."

"Drop the holo avatar; brute force is going to be easier without it. Your spark isn't going to be able to power the projection _and_ move me at the same time."

"I know I'm weak, okay!" Drift said, throwing his hands up in the air and winking back out of existence.

"I'm not being mean—I'm not trying to be mean. I'm trying to tell you how to do the thing efficiently so we can get out of here as fast as possible." He hesitated. "You're not weak, Drift. You're exhausted, there's a difference."

Drift, back in root mode, stepped up to his side and gingerly slid his hands under Ratchet's plating. It stuck where the spilled fuel had congealed. »I'm doing my best not to be mad at you right now,« Drift said over radio. »I'm trying my best not to be mad at me.«

"None of this is your fault." Ratchet tried to help, wiggling a little bit to scoot himself onto the waiting gurney.

»Stop saying that!« Drift got Ratchet settled on the gurney and spun on his heel to march towards the corner of the room where the surgical arms had deposited the pieces of Ratchet's plating they'd ripped away. Or tried to, anyway—Drift made it three steps before the stiletto heels Leniad had welded onto his feet sent him sprawling on the ground. Drift spat a series of impotent clicks and subvocal babble at the floor. »It is not your fault. None of this is your fault. You wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for me.«

"Well, it's not like I asked your permission to—"

»Stop trying to make me feel better by taking away my choices!« The transmission hit Ratchet like a tidal wave, echoed over all their transmission frequencies. »Saving your life was a CHOICE. Letting them take you was a CHOICE. Hurting you to buy time was a CHOICE. I made those choices and I'm allowed to feel awful about it! Because they were awful, okay Ratchet?« Drift stopped trying to claw at the stupid heels and dragged himself to his feet. He picked up the pile of plating and Ratchet's chestplate and hobbled back to the gurney. His face was streaked wet, his mouth was a firm line.

»And stop being so nice to me. You don't sound like you and I hate it.«

Ratchet squinted at him sceptically. He had _missed_ being able to squint sceptically. "You want me to me mean to you?"

»I want you to treat me like your partner, not a sparkling.« Drift said. He went to where Leniad's communicator had dropped and scooped it up, giving Leniad's still form a kick as he walked back.

Ratchet bit back some awful retort about being emotionally unbalanced like a sparkling. This wasn't the time to argue—they needed to escape. He could see himself in the way Drift was acting—desperate guilt followed by lashing out in hopes of someone treating you the way you deserved. The way you thought you deserved.

"Okay partner," he said. "Let's get out of here."

Drift startled, clearly caught off-guard. »One more thing« he said, swiping a laser scalpel off the cart and propping his leg up on the surgical slab. »I need to get these things off so I can walk«

"Let me," Ratchet said. His hands were still good, small blessings. Drift passed him the scalpel, saving them another argument. Ratchet peeled back the sloppy weld lines and cut the metal away from Drift's heel. The cuts leaked a little, but Drift held himself totally still. They'd seal up quick. Drift swapped legs and Ratchet did the other one. "Wish we had some surgical patches, I don't like you walking on open plating like that," Ratchet groused.

»When we get to the shuttle« Drift promised, pushing the gurney with a grunt of effort. Once it was rolling he didn't seem to struggle too much and pushing it gave him something to lean on—not that Ratchet was keeping on eye on him or anything. Outside the room, Drift keyed in a code to lock the door.

"Which way to the exit?" Ratchet asked.

»Not going to the exit yet« Drift replied, starting off down one of the identical hallways seemingly at random. »Gotta get to the control room.«

"Why would we want to do that?"

»Because we’re not letting this happen to anyone else« Drift said. They passed a section of wall paneling that had been ripped out and the wires apparently lit on fire.

"What if there's someone there?"

»Hopefully there won't be. I don't think whoever Leniad works for is on site. And I never saw them talk to anyone else.«

"What if there is?"

»This isn't happening to anyone else.« Drift repeated. »What kind of Autobots would we be if we left them able to do this again?«

"Well, I was thinking we'd run and then contact the authorities...on account of the fact murder is sorta illegal."

»Not people like us. Not in this sector of space.«

"What?"

Drift smiled fondly down at him. »You really dove in head first, didn't you? Did you do any research at all about where you were following me?«

"Uh, yes, I did. I researched all the local hospitals. I checked if it was Galactic Council space—no—and I checked if it was owned by the Black Box Consortium—also no."

»And totally missed that the local confederacy of planets have an explicitly organic-supremacist legal system. Technically there's no such charge as murder of a fully mechanical individual. I assume that's why they set up here.«

"I guess that explains why there was only one mechanical-specialist hospital in the region."

»Also explains the cooperation on the part of the other doctors.« Drift said.

"Do you think they know what's happening over here?"

»It'd be hard to miss patients not coming back. I'm sure they know something’s happening.«

"Slagheads. They could have warned us."

Drift shrugged and wheeled them around another corner.

"Do you even know where you're going?"

»I can sense it.«

"Forget I asked."

Drift smirked. »Don't ask me how I found the radio transmitters then.«

"You _didn't_."

Drift smirked harder. »Hey, it's not like sensing ley lines or auras. Everyone can feel electricity.«

"Since when?"

»Do you not get that—you know—kinda buzzing feeling in your denta? Is that just me?«

"You've probably got a wire loose in your jaw," Ratchet said.

Drift rolled his optics and led them around another corner to another door. He stepped away from the gurney and leaned close, shuttering his optics as he spread his palm flat on the door. »This is the one. I'm going in, I'll bring you as soon as the coast is clear.«

He picked up a laser scalpel and a pair of forceps from the gurney and made short work of the door lock. »Wish me luck.«

"Who needs luck? You’ve got Primus on your side," Ratchet said. Drift rolled his optics at him and threw himself through the door.

There was silence. Presumably there was nobody there to fight. That was a relief—he really wasn't sure Drift could have taken an attacker. Just some machinery to destroy and they'd be out of there.

»Ratchet?« Drift said from inside the room. »I think we've got a problem.«

"Please don't say that. Never say that. Just say what the problem is."

»There's not a machine. There's a kid.«

"Show me."

Drift emerged from the room, looking a bit shell-shocked. He grabbed the gurney and wheeled Ratchet inside.

Drift was wrong—there was a machine inside. There was platform with a host of IR sensors trained on it, an entire wall of monitors, and a tiny transparent box with a mass of wires feeding into the machinery on top. And inside the box there was a tiny mechanoid. _The puppeteer._ Well, the _puppet_. As Drift wheeled him closer Ratchet could see that the tiny mech was suspended from the ceiling of his tiny cell by hundreds of gossamer wires.

"Spark on a stick, just when you think this place couldn't get more messed up. Drift, get them out of there."

Drift leaned in close and tapped on the glass, catching the little mech's attention. They were _tiny_. No bigger than Drift's hand. Skinny arms and legs like a miniature Rung. They had long fingers and a round face with siz blue circular optics.

Drift visibly floundered for a moment. Shrugging, he cut a through the side of the box, then set the laser scalpel down. He materialized his holo form again, this time in miniature up on the platform where the box was. With a shimmer he shifted even smaller, small enough that he could climb inside the box.

"Hey, don't worry. We're not going to hurt you," Drift said. "I'm going to get you free, okay?"

The little mech didn't respond. Drift wiggled his little holomatter shoulders, like they needed loosening up somehow, little show-off. Then he ran straight at one of the glass walls, scaling it in three momentous steps and catching himself on the ceiling of the cage. He swung himself hand-over-hand to the center of the cage and dug something out of his boot. This must have been how Drift materialized in holo form without being picked up by the security cameras—he miniaturized himself.

Drift swung his knife at the cables and _of course_ his holomatter form came with a set of knives. How was Ratchet even surprised at this. He was still annoyed at himself that it hadn't occurred to him to check if this facility had holomatter inhibitors in place. Not that he would have been able to do much with it in his drugged-up state; he would have struggled to maintain visual coherency, let alone solidity.

Drift's holo really hadn't changed much. Still showing too much skin under all-black clothes, skin that was a canvas of brightly colored tattoos and jagged scars intertwined together. Hair cropped close to his head and ear mangled. The only new thing Ratchet could see was the thick white bandage wrapped around his neck, stained red. Well, they were supposed to be intuitive avatars.

Hooking his legs through the ceiling of the cage, Drift flopped upside down to reach the rest of the cables, cutting through them in what Ratchet assumed was no particular order. Ratchet realized his game when the last two cables left suspending the little mech were the ones anchored to his shoulders, presumably the place most capable of suspending his full weight.

"Okay, I'm sorry if this hurts," Drift said as he looped one of his hands through the cable before cutting it. The weight nearly jerked Drift's holomatter form to the floor of the cage and Ratchet could hear his frame start ramping up its fans to compensate for the pull on his spark.

"Be careful," Ratchet warned him.

"I've never been careful in my life," Drift said as he slashed out with his free hand to sever the other line. He grabbed onto the cable he was holding with both hands and began to slowly ease it downwards. "Don't worry, kid, I'll get you down in a minute."

"Why are you so convinced this mech is a child?" Ratchet asked.

"You really can't read auras, can you?" Drift said. He reached the end of his rope and let go, letting the mech drop the last few inches to the floor of the cage. Drift dropped down after him, doing a _spectacularly_ unnecessary backflip on the way down.

He skipped out of the cage and, with a shimmer, dematerialized again. Drift reached out into the cage and scooped up the little mech in his cupped hands. He carried them over to Ratchet for him to see.

The little thing was shivering. It made a little chirping sound as it curled up in Drift's hands. »Hey, it's okay Nugget, we're not mad at you« Drift cooed over radio.

"Nugget?" Ratchet said.

»Because he’s tiny?«

"That’s just dumb. Oh wow, you are tiny. What’s your name? Drift's right, nobody's mad at you. It doesn't exactly take a genius to see that you weren't here by choice."

The little thing squeaked again. "I'm sorry." He said, covering up his center optic. "I'm so sorry."

"Okay, bring him with us," Ratchet said. "We're busting out of here."

Drift deposited the little mech in Ratchet's hands and grabbed ahold of the gurney. »Don't worry Nugget, we'll bring you home.«

"We're _not_ calling him that," Ratchet said. "You’ve got a name already, right kiddo?"

The little mech shook his head. "No? What's ‘home'? Is it a good place to go?"

"The place you came from? Where you were before you were here?" Ratchet said, feeling his spark sink. There was _no way_ Leniad had built this kid. Because if you could build a tiny robot to control nanomachines you could make yourself capable of controlling nanomachines. They had definitely stolen Nugget. But, for a lot of mechs, wiping brain modules could be as simple as exposing them to high doses of electromagnetism.

"I've always been here," Nugget said. "Mr. Thiesk says it's what I was for—because robots are supposed to be useful tools for _real people_. I didn't want to hurt you."

"Of course not. That was you, right? You were the one who was speaking to me that first night?"

"Uh-huh," Nugget said. "I'd never met robots who were in love before—I didn't want anything bad to happen to you. I pretended the buggies couldn't control you at first, so you'd have time to leave. Mr. Thiesk and the doctor were mad."

"You did your best," Ratchet said. "We're going to get you to safety, even if we can't get you back to where you came from."

"But then Mr. Thiesk made the doctor make me make you hit Drift! Even though you love each other," Nugget blubbered. "I didn't want to! I'm so sorry."

Drift jerked to a halt. »The doctor. Leniad. Maybe he knows something. Nugget, would Leniad know where you came from?«

Nugget shook his head. "Mr. Thiesk had a different doctor before he had Leniad. They died. I do know something secret about Leniad though."

»And what is that?«

"He's not a real robot." Nugget put his finger to his mouth. "He's just playing pretend."

Drift looked over at Ratchet, a peculiar smile on his face. »And he and Mr. Thiesk are the only ones who visit this place? They're the only ones?«

"Uh-huh."

»Change of plans, Ratchet. I've got an idea.«

 

* * *

 

Under the armor, Leniad turned out to be a fairly standard looking Satropy, all long limbs and color-shifting scales. And it turned out that Thiesk's office had a window out into the terrarium, the perfect place to hide and observe between the tall flowing grasses and creeping vines. Ratchet squeezed Drift's hand as he watched the mastermind enter the room. Nugget was curled up against Ratchet’s other hand, small enough to hide behind his fingers.

Elter Thiesk, as Leniad had so kindly explained to them, was an "inventor". A bit of a local celebrity, the sort of person who had enough money that he could make problems go away by throwing money at them. Well, every problem in his life except death.

He had a mechsuit of his own, one that hid his body up to the neck, for which Ratchet was eternally grateful. Just the face was horrifying enough. Wrinkles fanned into wrinkles, three white sunken eyes buried deep in the loose folds of flesh. Leniad didn't flinch.

"Welcome back sir," they said. "You received my message?"

"Yes." Thiesk crossed his arms. "You lost the specimens? And my investment?"

"I told you the Cybertronians were a security risk," Leniad said. "But a worthwhile one—our experiment was a success."

"The blood?"

"Yes." Leniad nodded. "I've run a whole battery of tests on it and it appears to be safe—the lab animals have all survived. But I'm not sure how long the effect will last—the Cybertronians continuously expose their fuel to this spark energy."

"This is just our preliminary test," Thiesk said. "We can always find another Cybertronian, figure out how to keep them long-term to process the supplies. Is there enough for a transfusion?"

"Of course." Leniad said. "Do you want me to—"

"Well, you _are_ my personal doctor. Who else would I ask?" Thiesk smiled, all teeth. "I'm not getting any younger over here."

"Of course not, sir."

"Switching to mechanicals was a great idea, Leniad," Thiesk said. "Wasted all that time on vivisecting aliens when I could have jumped straight to stripping off the wasted flesh and replacing it with improved versions."

Leniad worked slowly, applying the numbing wipe and then placing the IV.

"Little sluggish today, Leniad," Thiesk commented as Leniad finally stepped back.

"Sorry sir. Still got a bit of a headache from when the one hit me." Leniad said.

Back in the terrarium, Ratchet tightened his grip on Drift's hand.

"The infusion may take some time, sir. I'll just fetch over some of my results on the Cybertronians for us to discuss during that time." Leniad ducked out of the room with a little bow. Ratchet waited, running a mental timer.

After a few minutes, Thiesk started looking around a little impatiently. He got out his communicator and started typing on it. At one point he got up and tried to walk to the door, but the infusion line wasn't long enough. "Where the hell is he?" Thiesk muttered.

At the half hour point Thiesk started getting really restless—trying to call people on his phone and getting static really threw him for a loop. He started trying to figure out a way to drag the stand for his drip bag over to the door. But when he got there, the door was locked from the outside. "What is going on, Leniad?" Thiesk yelled as he pounded on the door. "I am not paying you to play games."

Nugget climbed up Ratchet’s hand like it was a wall and began to wave his hands like he was urging something onward.

Little black grains of sand began to waft through the grass of the terrarium. They weren't really sand, of course. If Ratchet could have gotten one under a magnifying lens he would have been able to see their legs and wings—a swarm of nanomachines. They blew up against the glass in waves, sticking to it like a inky sheen. Then they parted to form words against the glass, written backwards from Ratchet's position on the inside of the terrarium.

 _Patient Thirty-Eight Control Saturation_.

"What!" Thiesk screamed. "Let me go this instant!"

_We Require A Specimen For Further Testing_

_Are There Any Volunteers_

Then the nanos buzzed off, leaving Ratchet with the beautiful sight of Thiesk, blue as a energon goody, trying to wiggle his way out of his own powersuit. Nugget couldn't control Thiesk, of course, but his mechanical powersuit? That was a different story.

The door slid open and Leniad walked inside, dragging another Leniad behind him, this one still wearing his mangled outer armor. "Hello Elter," Leniad said, form melting into Drift's human holoform. "Feeling comfortable?"

"I'm sorry sir," Leniad babbled. "I didn't want to tell them anything!"

"Oh, no need to lie Leniad," Drift said. "I didn't even have to threaten to give you that injection before you were telling me _everything_ I needed to know to impersonate you."

"Who are you?" Thiesk demanded.

"I'm Specimen Thirty Six," Drift said sweetly. "But you can call me Drift. Did you do any research on me and Ratchet before you turned Leniad loose on us? Anything at all?"

"Why would I?"

"So you would know, you colossal waste of space, that Ratchet of Iacon is the _Chief Medical Officer_ of the Autobots and a personal friend of every mech alive who's held The Matrix. There is nowhere in the universe you could kill him and not have someone come looking."

Ratchet winced at that. He _really_ needed to sit Drift down and explain what had happened since he'd left.

"And what about you?" Thiesk said. "Stop blubbering Leniad, I don't care! What about you...Drift? Are you some alien general who would have armies coming in search of you?"

"Nah." Drift said. "I'm a freak—I've been exiled from _both_ sides of our war and society besides. But you know what I'm real good at?" He licked his lips, showing off teeth too sharp for a real human. "Revenge."

Leniad's optics widened and he glanced off to the side at the injection bag of blood, mostly empty.

"There we go, brain cells finally at work. Now, maybe that's just normal blood—Leniad showed me your supply—just infused with some nanomachines to keep you still. Or maybe it's the blood you used to violate my sparkmate, which is now poisoning you for your hubris. Really no way to know, is there?"

"Get it out of me!" Thiesk ordered.

Drift laughed. "I could be tempted, I suppose. There's one thing I want more than revenge, as it turns out. Where did you find your puppeteer? Give me everything you have on Nugget and I'll let your pet doctor try to save you."

"He was being wasted! The couple that invented him wanted to use him for farming! Farming!"

"Look, neither you nor I have time to have you shout incoherent nonsense at me. Do you have digital records on acquiring Nugget?"

Thiesk slouched. Well, as much as he could slouch while being held tight in his armor by Nugget. With the transmitters down, Nugget could only control people within a few hundred feet of him—which Ratchet still thought was pretty damned impressive. "I have records."

"Good. Direct those to this data upload location," Drift said, pointing off at the window. Nugget waved his arms and a direct upload address appeared. "If the information therein is satisfactory, I will let you go. If not, I will give myself the privilege of opening your chest and visiting _every_ violation onto you that you forced onto my sparkmate." Drift's solid light projection was glowing with intensity, no longer possible to mistake for a human.

»Drift, you've made your point. Get out of there before you blow a fuse.« Ratchet ordered.

Drift spoke quickly. "I will be checking over the information you send. It's in your best interest not to delay." He walked out of the room, locking the door behind him.

With a groan, Drift resettled back into his frame. "Ratchet, my head hurts," Drift complained. In the time between making the call to Thiesk and his grand schooner pulling up at the hospital shuttle bay Ratchet had been able to get Drift's vocalizer repaired, at least.

"That's because you're being a _drama queen_ ," Ratchet groused. "You were glowing in there, Drift. Glowing."

"I wasn't doing it on purpose!" Drift protested.

"Even better, you've got so little control that you're just glowing spontaneously now. That's just great."

"Has he sent you the information yet?" Drift asked.

"I don't like giving that slimy creep my personal upload frequency," Ratchet said. "And yes. He did."

"Is it there? Where Nugget’s from?" Drift peeked over Ratchet’s shoulder to check on Nugget, still focusing with all his optics squeezed tight, arms hugging his chest as he held Leniad and Thiesk in place.

"I can't read and talk at the same time, Drift, be patient for a second." He skimmed over the files. Planet of origin, original contract with the bounty hunter he had steal Nugget, plans for the puppet box. And way in the back of the file, a little snippit from a science news article about Ioq triad from Kirtac 9 who'd invented a mechanoid to control invasive pest nanomachine swarms.

"There's not a name listed for Nugget, but I know where he's from," Ratchet said. "We've got what we need, we can get out of here."

"Right," Drift said. His frame went lax again and Ratchet rolled his optics. Drift couldn't say when he was shifting forms or anything—no, he just had to disappear midconversation.

The door to Thiesk's office opened again and Drift's holo strode in. "Thank you, that was very helpful."

"Then let us go," Thiesk demanded. Leniad was quiet, still lying on the floor where Drift had left them in their disabled armor.

"Do you know why there are so many nanomachines in the terrarium?" Drift asked. "Who put them there?"

"I assumed Leniad did," Thiesk said.

"I assumed you did," Leniad said, frowning.

"You did," Drift said. "Or, rather, you dumped the bodies of all your victims in there, still full of nanomachines. The nanos needed to eat _something_ , so they ate the bodies. And I suppose they’ll eat yours as well, once they’re given the chance.

"You promised you'd let us go!" Thiesk said.

Drift laughed. "Ratchet was telling the truth, you know. I was made, not forged. And do you know what I did to the mech who made me? I killed him him. I have murdered better men than you for less reason. But I don't intend to give myself the pleasure, because I'm not the only person you've hurt."

He waved at the security camera in the corner. "Smile folks, you're on camera. And this is being broadcast to every monitor in the Iredem hospital. Every person you've terrified and bullied into corrupting their profession, on fear for their lives. Whose patients you've murdered and whose colleagues you've gutted to make yourself armor," Drift kicked Leniad.

"I will leave you to their mercy." Drift spread his arms. "You've both been injected with what I'm hoping is a fatal dose of irradiated blood. Maybe they’ll save you. I know I wouldn't."

Drift tapped his comm microphone. "Nugget? Break the glass, please."

The nanomachines swarmed over the terrarium glass again and began to vibrate, a horrible high pitched humming noise. Ratchet rolled over to shield Drift and Nugget as the glass shattered. Drift looked over at him and winked yellow-gold. "I've got you, Ratch." He rolled himself to his knees and braced himself to pick Ratchet up. "Nugget? A little help? I don't think I can actually stand up on my own."

"You're an idiot," Ratchet said as Drift effortlessly scooped him up in his arms, relying on the nanomachines still in their bodies to override the fact he was actually too weak to do that. "And you're a very bad Spectralist."

Drift hummed in agreement and stepped down into the room of broken glass and the two organics trapped inside their armor and inside their skin. The floor was awash with broken glass and wriggling nanomachines. He locked the door from the outside. "They deserved worse."

"Yeah, but aren't you supposed to be all about zen and forgiveness and shit now?" Ratchet said.

"Spectralism is a lot of things, but it's not a pacifistic religion," Drift said. "Some people you can't save and you can't stop any other way. Do you..." he hesitated, "would you have let them live?"

"No, I would have shot them, right between the eyes. If you don't do it yourself you leave it for someone else to do, maybe someone less able to make that decision."

"Oh good." Drift sighed. "I thought I'd scared you off there."

"I'm hard to scare. And harder to carry, put me down for fuck’s sake and get a cart or something, you're going to throw out your back."

"No."

And sure enough, Drift carried him all the way to the hospital shuttle bay. Nugget curled up in Ratchet’s hands, hiding from the assembled crowd. Ratchet waved off the doctors who tried to get close. He didn't need help and he didn't want any of them touching him. He'd do it himself.

That same awkward receptionist that had tried to scare Ratchet away from joining Drift met them at the ramp up to the shuttle. He saluted Drift—what a ridiculous kid. "Ship fueled and ready to go. We took the liberty resupplying you. And I promise _we didn't see anything._ "

Drift inclined his head gravely. "May Primus bless you in all your future forms and purposes." He waited a beat for him to move. "Look, he is _very_ heavy, please let me through."

"Oh, sorry!" The kid shuffled out of their way and stumbled off the ramp, trying to wave while walking backwards. He popped back up and kept waving.

Drift unlocked the door and got them inside. He leaned back against the wall and slid down onto his aft, still cradling Ratchet in his arms. "I don’t know how I’m going to get us to the medstation in the cockpit." Drift admitted.

Ratchet gestured broadly towards the newly arrived crates of supplies and the wheelchair nestled in their midst. "Your chariot awaits. Go on, get us out of here. Once we’re en route I’ll get us both fixed up."

"Where are we going?" Nugget asked, looking up at Ratchet with all six of his blue eyes.

"Like I said before," Ratchet said. "We’re taking you home."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content notes continued from above - Ratchet is paralyzed and subjected to medical experimentation and torture, which is later revealed to be carried out by Drift under control by their kidnappers.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Thanks for reading everyone & thanks in advance to everyone who leaves comments - your enthusiasm & kind words are what keep me going through these long chapters. 
> 
> The next chapter is going to be pretty much exactly what Ratchet says at the end there - they're going to get fixed up and take Nugget home. Along the way there will be a lot of time for anxiety, feelings and important conversations that have been put off too long.


	4. En Route to Kirtac 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was posted in a big rush before laptop could die (annoyingly timed power outage) so let me know if you see any typos that slipped through! Also, may I just say _wow_ I did not see the ending of Lost Light coming! Okay, back to our heroes, who've just escaped the "hospital" at Iredem and are taking little Nugget home to his family on Kirtac 9.
> 
> (To any chapter 3 commenters I haven't replied to - I promise I'll get to you! Usually I finish my replies before I post the next chapter but: time crunch, power outage, laptop dying. soon!)

"Ratchet, you can stop now."

"I'll stop when I'm damn ready, Drift. Get on the berth, you're up next."

"I can wait until you're better. Really. It doesn't even hurt to walk on—"

"If you put _one foot_ on the ground I will chop it off. _On the berth._ "

"Ratch, really, you look like you're going to fall over."

"Hence why I'm sitting. Pipe down, I know my limits. And I know that, integrating repair work this extensive? I'm planning to go down in deep recharge, wake up in a week or two. I don't want you limping around and messing yourself up worse in the meantime. Now, scoot."

 

* * *

  
  
"What are you doing?"

"Hmm?"

"What are you doing with the blanket? Stop hovering."

"I was tucking you in."

"I do not need—just—just—"

"Go to sleep Ratchet, I think your vocoder's glitching."

 

* * *

 

"There are two perfectly good berthrooms, you know. I put your stuff in one of them."

"I saw."

"Then what are you doing over there?"

"Keeping an eye on the nav display, checking the course I'd plotted."

"You're not going to sit there and watch me sleep."

"Oh no, that's never going to happen. Now, sitting guard over you after you _pass out_ —that seems pretty damned likely."

"I can't sleep because you're hovering. Stop hovering and go to your berthroom."

"No."

"I'll get up."

"You absolutely will not get up, Ratch. Because if you try you're going to faint and that would be very undignified."

"I would not _faint_."

"Go to sleep Ratchet. I'll be here when you wake up, you can yell at me more then."

 

* * *

 

Ratchet woke to an empty room, unsure of what had pulled him out of his recharge. He wasn't ready yet, the deep exhaustion of all those repairs still weighing on his chest. He struggled to clear his optics and the deep malaise that had settled over him like a shroud.

The air felt unsettled, like someone had just walked through. The sedentary circuit slab Drift had been using was parked up by the viewscreen, beside the pilot's controls. Ratchet’s chrono hadn’t caught up with him yet, maybe Drift was healed enough to be walking. But he certainly hadn’t been cleared by Ratchet and Ratchet was prepared to complain all the same as soon once he saw him.

He didn't expect Drift to saunter in, walking on his hands upside down with the sort of grace Ratchet had rarely accomplished walking on two feet. Drift walked over to his chair and, with no apparent effort, swung his body forward through his arms and back into the seat. He tossed his head and grinned a little private victory. He hadn't noticed Ratchet yet.

Who'd given him the right to be so beautiful when he smiled? Ratchet could feel himself stretched grey and empty in front of that incandescent smile.

He couldn't force himself to make a noise, but eventually Drift's eyes found his. The smile didn't flee. Drift wheeled himself over to the berth and smoothed his hands over the entirely unnecessary blanket.

"I'm sorry if I woke you," Drift murmured. "Nugget was having a nightmare, I went to settle him in."

Ratchet turned his face away, emotions welling up that he didn't want Drift to see and didn't trust himself to hide.

"Oh, Ratch," Drift murmured. He hesitated, as if he was considering saying something more. If he did say more Ratchet missed it, because he fell back under somewhere between one moment and the next.

 

* * *

 

When he woke up next he wasn't alone, though Drift was, again, nowhere to be seen. The little guy was there instead—Nugget, Drift had decided to name him. Nugget was sitting on Drift's chair, dwarfed by its seat with his legs stretched out in front of him. When he saw Ratchet looking, Nugget scuttled back to hide behind one of the arm rests.

Ratchet sighed.

"Hey kiddo," he said. The words came out sleep-rough as he tried to plaster on a reassuring smile for the kid. "What are you doing here?"

No answer, but he hadn't much expected one. Nugget hadn't said much of anything to him yet, too shy or too scared. He seemed to get along better with Drift, which was hardly surprising.

Ratchet wondered what had woken him, running through internal readouts looking for any alerts and finding nothing. Maybe a sound from somewhere in the ship. Maybe Drift needed help.

"Hey, let's go find Drift for you," Ratchet said, kicking the blanket away from him and swinging his legs out to touch the cool cabin floor. The damage to his sensornet had mostly healed, his internal readouts told him, which gave him the courage to test his legs.

Ratchet _knew_ how important it was to rest while his autonomic repairs integrated the rejoined sensornet—years of patients with incurable ghost pains from incorrectly fused sensornet had been the only thing keeping him in the medstation berth. He'd been in recharge mostly to skip out on the experience. Now that he was awake again his plating was again crawling with the need to escape, his brain unable to convince his body that _this _berth wasn't the one where he'd been held captive in Iredem.__

He stood up slowly, hand braced against the berth. When he lifted up his supporting hand and tried to take a step he folded like an overtanked mech inactivating their FIM chip. That was annoying.

Ratchet was ready to be up but apparently his damn legs disagreed with him.

Nugget peered over the armrest at him, optics wide with concern. Ratchet waved a dismissive hand. "I'm fine," he said. "I forgot about the nanomachines."

He hooked the chair with his foot to drag it closer and then, leaning heavily on one of the armrests, pulled himself into the seat. He offered the kid a hand up to sit on his lap instead of hiding behind the armrest and, after a moment's hesitation, Nugget climbed up.

Wheeling the chair was easier than walking. Ratchet had completely forgotten about the nanomachines, the only thing he hadn't figured out how to fix before Drift badgered him into recharging. Nugget wasn't actively controlling them now, though Ratchet had no doubt he _could_ have. The thought made him uncomfortable, moreso than the actual symptoms. Lack of coordination, weakness, slow neural net response...he should have _realized_ what was going on with Drift before Iredem had its chance to sink its fangs into them. Good thing he'd already given up on being CMO, he'd have felt compelled to step down after this disaster.

Ratchet got the door open and wheeled on out into the narrow corridor between the cockpit and the door out into the cargo bay. Drift wasn't in his berthroom, the narrow cabin across the hall from Ratchet's. It clearly _was_ Drift's berthroom—he'd laid all his swords across the berth and left the rest of his effects neatly laid out on the shelves. The room smelled of smoke and sugar and blade polish. Ratchet shut the door.

Drift also wasn't in Ratchet's berthroom—good, he'd locked it. The room was dark and undisturbed, had laid empty since Drift had pulled up outside the Seething. Drift also wasn't in the minuscule washrack squeezed in at the end of the hallway. Which left only the cargo bay.

Ratchet braced himself for whatever might be beyond the door—something had to have woken him up, probably a noise. Drift had gotten the same dose of nanos that Ratchet had, whatever hazy half-asleep memories he had of Drift swanning about the ship upside down. He ought to have been as uncoordinated as Ratchet. He clearly wandered off without his chair, what if he'd fallen down the hatch into the engine room and split his helm open?

Ratchet opened the door and abruptly realized he'd braced himself for the wrong kind of chaos.

There were a few good things he could see right off the bat: Drift definitely wasn't dead, he knew what had made the noise and there didn't appear to be any structural damage to the shuttle.

On the other hand...he wheeled his way over to where Drift had managed to get his head and left shoulder stuck in the vent up by the cargo bay ceiling, feet dangling several feet off the floor. The upended crates of medical equipment had probably been a makeshift platform until Drift knocked them over.

"What in the name of sanity are you doing?" he said.

Drift abruptly stopped his wiggling. "Ratchet?" he asked. His voice was weirdly muffled, talking into the air vent. "What are you doing here?"

"Figuring out what woke me up. Which I assume was...this?" He paused, tried to put the question into words. "What are—what you doing?"

"I'm stuck."

"I can see that." Ratchet looked around at the room, crates upended every which way and their contents strewn about like Drift had either started a epic cleaning bender or had been—"You looking for something?"

"Nugget's missing!" Drift started trying to wiggle his way free again, his one hand braced against the wall. Ratchet wasn't sure how he'd fit his head and shoulder _into_ the air vent, let alone how he was going to get back out. "I went to go check on him and he wasn't sleeping in his nest. I checked my room, the engine room, the washracks, the cargo bay, all the medical supplies that got sent over...I didn't check your room but it was locked and then I realized Nugget was small enough to fit in the air vents and Primus, what if he got in there and got chopped to pieces by one of the fans. And then I...well, you can tell what happened."

"I can tell what happened," Ratchet agreed. "You don't need to look for Nugget."

"He's tiny and vulnerable and our responsibility—"

"And sitting right over here with me, watching you make a fool of yourself. When I told you to stay off your feet this is _not_ what I meant."

"He's with you?" Drift asked, frantic edge of his voice finally washed away. He slumped, to what extent a person could slump while hanging from an air vent. "Oh. He must have slipped out when I went out to check on him. Primus, Nugget—you scared me."

"You going to be able to get down from there?" Ratchet asked, folding his arms across his chest. It was hard to look imperious when you were speaking directly to someone's aft.

Drift wiggled some more. "I can get it. I don't understand how I got stuck, my _finials_ fit..."

Ratchet sighed. Nugget giggled. Then he clamped his oversized hands over his face and looked guiltily over his fingertips at Ratchet. Ratchet smiled back at him. "No, no, you're right. He is a _very_ silly mech." He rolled his head back over to yell at Drift. "I don't know if you've _noticed_ but your shoulders are wider than your finials, you gearstick."

"There we go..." Drift gritted out, bracing both feet against the wall and pushing. "There's the Ratchet I know. Glad to hear you're feeling better."

"Don't break anything I can't fix," Ratchet commented.

"Frag you," Drift muttered. With a squeal of metal on metal he popped free, the force of his efforts to free himself throwing him through the air in a trajectory towards Ratchet. Drift twisted his head to stare, horrified, as Ratchet scooped up Nugget and held him high in the air. Out of the way as Drift barrelled into them, knocking the chair clean over.

Ratchet blinked up at the ceiling and tried to remember a single reason why he'd thought going on this adventure was a good idea. Drift started patting him down, as if he was worried that his lightweight aft had caused permanent dents. "Primus, I'm so sorry Ratch. Are you okay? And Nugget? Are you both okay?"

"Just stop—stop patting me Drift, I'm fine." He glanced over at Nugget and opened his hand to let him scurry off to safety. "We're both fine. Just get me upright, okay?"

Drift climbed off of him and swooped the wheelchair back onto its wheels with a grand sweep of his arm. "Anything for you, sweetspark," Drift said.

Ratchet squinted at him.

Drift knelt down beside the chair and threw his arms around Ratchet in a hug. "I missed you so much," he said, leaning his helm into Ratchet's neck. Ratchet was about to throw him off when Drift whispered, "Just play along, okay? For Nugget."

"We need to talk," Ratchet said.

"You need to rest," Drift said, pulling away. "Let’s get you back in your berth. Nugget—just wait here, I'll come back in a minute."

"I don't need to _rest_ , I've been sleeping for—days?" He had the date up on his chronometer, he just couldn't remember when they'd gotten out of Iredem.

"Two weeks," Drift said. "And you still look tired."

"I always look tired. I've been tired for the past three million years," Ratchet complained. He grimaced—he hadn't meant to say that. Maybe Drift was right, but—"I've got better things to do than sleep. Need to figure out how to purge the nanomachines out of our systems. How are _you_ walking around?"

Drift laughed, leaning on the back of the chair as he wheeled them back to the cabin. "Practice, Ratch. I've had two weeks to practice." He scooted the chair up beside the berth. "It's not so bad once you get used to it—it's like walking on a boat on choppy water, just gotta roll with it. It's really only the exhaustion that bothers me." He offered Ratchet a hand up up onto the berth and then started fussing with the blanket.

"Leave it. I'm not sleeping; grab me my datapad, would you?" Ratchet grumbled, scooting to the head of the berth so he could lean his shoulders against the wall. "And I told you not to walk on my nice new welds!"

"You told me that two weeks ago, they healed," Drift said with a wave of his hand. He leaned over and flipped onto his hands again, poking the bottoms of his feet in Ratchet's face. "See?"

"I see, I see, sheesh. Don't be a show-off, just get me my datapad." Ratchet grumped.

Drift smiled sweetly at him from upside down and wandered off on his hands towards the console. He hopped his weight onto one hand and delicately lifted the datapad with the other, then made eye contact with Ratchet over his shoulder.

"Do _not_ ," Ratchet warned.

Drift ignored him and clamped the datapad between his teeth before walking back over to Ratchet and setting it gently on the berth.

"I cannot believe you, you've gotten it wet," Ratchet said, wiping the datapad off with the blanket. "Leave you alone for two weeks with a kid and you both turn into sparklings."

Drift flipped back down and put a restraining hand on Ratchet's wrist. Ratchet looked over and Drift was stony serious. "He _is_ just a kid, okay?" Drift said. "And he's been through horrible things. I know you're you, but don't...be careful with him, okay?"

Ratchet snorted. "I'm not going to throw things at him. I've been with newframes before, you know. Job hazard of overseeing newly thawed MTOs."

Drift winced.

"Speaking of, you should go make sure he hasn't actually climbed in the air vent," Ratchet said. "Let me work, I'm going to figure out how to purge these dang nanomachines."

 

* * *

 

 

Ratchet banged on the door. He didn't think Drift could actually hear him, what with the roar of the spray and the volume he was singing. One of the primal litanies, if he didn't miss his mark. One of the less annoying ones, but that didn't do anything to improve his mood. He didn't care what Drift was singing, he wanted him to _stop_ and open the damn door.

"Drift!" he yelled. "Stop polishing and get the damn door open!" He banged at the door again and then abruptly remembered that they had radio capability again. He sent out an emergency ping and gave up on banging on the door, pushing his mouth into the crook of his elbow and trying to keep his ventilations even.

The noise stopped and the water shut off; Ratchet sagged with relief.

The door slid open and a very confused looking Drift appeared, dripping wet and wreathed in steam. "Are you okay, Ratch?" he asked, optics flicking up and down the hall as if searching for intruders.

Ratchet shouldered past him and fell to his knees, heaving up a gush of dead nanomachines and carrier fluid. Drift caught him by the shoulder before he could tip face first into the mess and held him there as his overloaded filtration system disgorged itself in a series of violent cramps. When it was over and Ratchet could hold himself up, frame still shaking, Drift spoke up.

Babbled was more the word. "Are you okay? Should we try to find a hospital—not Iredem, a real hospital—should we go back to the Lost Light? I'm sure First Aid or Ambulon could help you, if you don't want to have a—"

"Drift." Ratchet growled. He spat out the foul taste in his mouth and grimaced. "I'm fine. Body's clearing out the nanobots. Just didn't expect it to happen so fast."

Drift curled his hand around Ratchet's shoulder and frowned at him. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm _damn_ well sure I don't need people touching me right now," Ratchet snapped, shaking Drift off. "I'm _fine_."

Drift stepped back like he'd been slapped, except if he'd been slapped he would have tried to defend himself. Ratchet was too miserable to care. Drift fled the washrack and slammed the door behind him as Ratchet finally eased himself up onto one of the benches and got one of the sprayers working to wash all that down into the floor drain. He felt awful. He _was_ awful.

Once he felt like his legs could carry him, he staggered back out into the hallway to find Drift and make sure he was okay. He caught a murmur of voices coming from behind Drift's door. He hesitated at the doorway.

"Sometimes people who love each other make each other angry, but that doesn't mean they don't love each other," Drift said patiently. There was a whisper Ratchet couldn't make out and then Drift interrupted, "No. Of course not. Ratchet's not mad at you either, you know. He's just vulnerable and he hates that."

Ratchet slunk away back to his berth in the medibay, like a hurt cyberlynx retreating back to its den. Drift was coping with what'd happened just fine, why couldn't he keep it together?

 

* * *

 

Ratchet lifted the scan up to the overhead light, looking for any anomalies. This one looked clear—no disturbances in the normal neural signalling pathways. He set it aside and picked up Drift's scan to look over. He'd managed to work out a less aggressive treatment for the nanomachines before letting Drift try it. But that meant he was less sure that all of them would have been cleaved from their chokehold on Drift's neural net.

There was a noise from somewhere down near the ground and Ratchet looked away from his scanner to see Nugget sprawled on his back, foiled again in his attempts to climb on the sheer face of the console. Ratchet sighed.

"What are you doing over here again, little guy?" He asked. "I keep telling you, you don't want to hang out with me. I'm mean." He knelt down to offer Nugget a hand to step onto and then straightened up again. "Let's go find Drift for you."

"No!" Nugget said, a voice like bells that startled Ratchet so badly he jumped. Nugget had gone so long not talking to him that he'd nearly forgotten he _could_ talk.

He set Nugget down on the console and crossed his arms. "No? Why no?"

"Want to talk to _you_ ," Nugget insisted, crossing his arms right back at Ratchet.

Ratchet contemplated this for a moment, then put down the scans and sat down in the pilot’s chair. With a kid like Nugget, whatever was bothering him probably seemed very important; pushing him away would only make him more upset. "Okay," he said. "What do you want to talk about?"

Nugget hesitated, fiddling his overly long fingers, face all scrunched up in hesitation. "Are you mad at me?" He asked finally.

"Whatever would I be mad at you for?" Ratchet asked.

"Because I made bad things happen to you!" Nugget burst out. "I hurt you!"

"You didn't choose to do that."

"Are you mad at Drift?" Nugget asked. "I made him hurt you and now you're angry at him. I don't know how to fix it," he wailed, covering his face in his hands.

"Hey now, hey," Ratchet said. He poked at Nugget with one finger until the tiny mech uncovered his face. "I'm not mad at you and I'm not mad at Drift. I'm old and I'm mean, but I'm not _mad_ at anyone except myself. None of that should have happened, because I should have seen it coming and kept everyone safe."

"But...how can _you_ feel guilty? We hurt _you_."

"Guilt doesn't need to be rational," Ratchet said.

"But what if...what if..."

"Is there something else?" Ratchet asked.

"What if they don't want me back?" Nugget whispered. "My family? Drift says if they love me they'll forgive me but I don't _remember_ them. How can I know? If they find out all the bad things I did," he sniffled. "All those people I helped them hurt."

"That isn’t on you," Ratchet said firmly. "Linead and, what's-his-fucking-name, Thiesk. They might have made you think it was your fault. Because they were _bad people_ and they liked hurting people. Why did they need you? Why not just do their fucked up torture themselves? Why force Drift to hurt me? Because they enjoyed it."

"But—"

"But nothing. If you hadn’t been there, all those people still would have died. Only difference is _you_ wouldn't have gotten hurt too. Look—I understand how you're feeling."

He hesitated, then offered Nugget a hand to climb onto. He cupped his other hand over the tiny robot's trembling frame. "I had a friend who I got hurt—who I got killed. His name was Ambulon. It wasn't my fault, it was some sadist, like Thiesk, who wanted to hurt me by hurting him. But I still feel guilty, every day, that I let it happen."

"Could you have stopped him?"

Ratchet shrugged. "I don't know. I don't think so, but I don't know."

Nugget scrunched up his face again. "You shouldn't feel bad. It wasn't your fault. It's not fair."

"Yeah, that's what _I'm_ trying to tell _you_ ," Ratchet said. "What happened to those people wasn't your fault. I wish someone had saved you earlier, because kids like you—you shouldn't have had to live through that. It's not right."

Ratchet sat with him awhile longer, tiny robot curled up in his cupped hands. If Nugget's family didn't want him, he promised, they'd find somewhere else for him to go. Somewhere he'd be safe. Somewhere far away from Ratchet and the bad luck that followed him everywhere he went.

When Nugget was asleep—Ratchet had never seen a mechanical that slept as much as Nugget did—when he was asleep, Ratchet got up to take him back to the little nest they'd made for him in Drift's room. He nearly tripped over Drift, who was loitering in the hallway beyond the door from the cabin. Drift shuffled out of the way and smiled when he caught sight of Nugget.

"Ratch, I—" he started softly.

Ratchet shushed him. "Just got him to sleep," he whispered. Nugget had excellent hearing and even better pickup of radio frequencies. The only way to have a private conversation was to put a few doors between you and him and wait till he was in deep sleep.

Needless to say, they hadn't had a lot of private conversations lately.

 

* * *

 

 

With the clean bill of health he'd given himself, Ratchet felt confident finally moving back into his own berthroom. His own room—with a lock and some privacy and without the incessant chiming of medical monitoring equipment informing him he wasn't dead yet. He'd have moved days earlier but staying close to the medical equipment was the only thing that’d stopped Drift from hanging over him like a sniper at all times.

He forced himself to socialize for a bit, and sat in the cabin reading while Drift and Nugget chattered. Then he announced that he would be recharging in his own room and headed out for some peace and quiet.

He hadn't even gotten himself settled on his berth before the door opened and Drift slipped inside.

"I locked that door," Ratchet observed.

"I lived in Dead End, I know how to get through locked doors," Drift said warmly. He was hugging his blanket to his chest as he locked the door again behind him.

"I'm sure you _can_ but generally locking a door is meant as a signal you don't want people coming in. What are you doing?" He asked, as Drift sat down on the floor beside the berth and shook his blanket out on top of himself.

"Was planning on sleeping," Drift said.

"On my floor."

Drift shrugged. "I've slept in worse places."

"You've got your own room here. Scoot." Ratchet said, nudging Drift's shoulder with his foot. "I'm good now. All healed up. I do _not_ need someone watching me while I sleep."

Drift turned on him, trying to look cute and sad. It wouldn't work on Ratchet. "But Ratch, I need to stay here! Nugget's getting suspicious."

"And what is Nugget getting suspicious about?"

"Do you remember when you let him borrow that collection of earth movies you said Swerve sent you—"

"Yes, I also remember reminding you not to let him melt his brain on television."

"—well, he wanted to watch them because he wanted to know how families are "supposed" to act. And now it's backfired—he thinks that because we're "married" we should be sleeping together."

"I see." Ratchet nodded slowly. "Have you considered mentioning we're _not_ married?"

"We can't!"

"We absolutely can and should tell him the truth. Hell, I'll get up and do it now. ‘We lied and said we were married so Iredem wouldn't separate us but we're actually just friends.’ Look—it's only one sentence."

"No, we can't," Drift said. "Look, Nugget doesn't know any other mechanicals. Everything he knows about what he is was fed to him by those psychopaths. He really didn't believe he was capable of being loved—and he told me that knowing we're together gives him hope. It's important to him and it's not doing any harm. Another week and he's back with his family and you never have to pretend to like me again, okay?"

Ratchet sighed. He should put his foot down. Lies like this...they always had a way of getting out of hand. He knew Drift was telling the truth about Nugget. But he knew he wasn't telling _all_ of the truth. "Drift, you idiot. Why do you think I came to find you if I didn't like you?"

Drift shrugged. "Duty? Obligation? Guilt? Your pig-headed sense of stubborness? Honestly there's a lot of options."

"I came to find you because I missed you," Ratchet said. "And because it was the right thing to do. But mostly because you are my friend, and I wanted you back." He reached over and tweaked Drift's finial. Drift squeaked and ducked away, glaring at Ratchet. Ratchet shook his finger at him. "Don't let your brain get weird on you—I don't hate you. I'm just _me_."

Drift smoothed his hand over the quilted hexagons of the blanket. "So can I stay here tonight?"

Ratchet sighed. It hurt. The way Drift was clearly _aching_ for something Ratchet couldn't give him, something Ratchet didn't deserve. He didn't like playacting a thing he could never have but Drift—Drift wanted it. And Nugget wanted it. He could do it for them.

"Yeah, you can stay," Ratchet said. "But I'm not lying to him. If he asks me outright I'm telling the truth."

"Thank you," Drift said.

"Let's not talk about it," Ratchet said, popping open his arm console to dim the lights. "You want to sleep in here? Sleep."

Drift was quiet for a few luxurious seconds before he opened his mouth again. "Ratch? I have something I have to tell you."

Ratchet rolled over to stare at him in the darkness. His biolights were gauzy muted gold through the blanket but his optics were piercing blue. Ratchet hoped the depths of his unenthusiasm were obvious.

"I overheard you this morning. When you were talking to Nugget."

Ratchet bit back a comment about sneaking about and listening in on people's conversations—the ship they were on was too small for secret conversations. Instead he interrupted Drift before he could get the question out. "I don't want to talk about it."

"But Ambulon—"

"We're not talking about that tonight."

"He was my friend too," Drift said softly.

"But he wasn't your _responsibility_ ," Ratchet said. "Remember how back at Iredem you said it was better not to know? You were right. You're better off not knowing. He's dead. There’s nothing else in that story that won’t hurt you."

"I was wrong. I thought I couldn't handle knowing, but _not knowing_ is worse. Right now, everyone could be dead. Anyone could be dead. Every conversation with you is like playing hand grenade tag and I don't know if someone's pulled the pin."

Ratchet shuttered his optics. "It's not going to kill you to wait a day, alright? Soon. Not tonight. Tonight, let's just get some sleep."

 

* * *

 

"Ratchet, he's dead!"

Ratchet was on his feet before his brain had even clocked where he was—instincts from four million years on call. By then his optics had powered up and he could see Drift in the doorway, cradling a small form in his hands. His spark sank.

"Nobody's dead until I say they are. Get him to the medstation," Ratchet ordered.

Ratchet followed right behind, pushing Drift out of the way to get close to his tiny patient. He clipped on his magnifier and folded out his microsurgical suite. He slipped his thumb and forefinger through the controls for the smallest gripper and carefully manipulated the body to a supine position. Nugget wasn't waking up, but he wasn't completely cold yet. Ratchet had _missed_ something. He'd missed something _again_.

"He's not dead. I'm going to try to wake him," Ratchet said. "Right now, I need you to think of any symptoms that Nugget might have shown before now. Anything he told you, anything you saw."

He steadied his hands against the berth, an old habit, and ran the gentlest tingle of power he could through one of his neurocircuitry hookups. Nugget jolted, but didn't respond. Ratchet hissed through his teeth and did it again. No response. He didn't want to increase the voltage, he didn't know enough about how Nugget was constructed. They'd been lucky Nugget could run off of Energon—

"Drift. Has Nugget been fueling? Have you _seen_ him fueling?"

Drift made a noise of confusion. "Not much? But he's so small, I assumed that was fine."

Ratchet popped Nugget's chassis open with a twist of his wrist. Luckily Nugget was easier to open than a Cybertronian. He stared at the foreign architecture of interlocking components, trying to find an analogue in his memory banks. Thousands of xenoanatomy lectures flashed through his head. A battlefield memory hit him like a fusion cannon blast; holding a dead civilian in his arms and tasting burnt flesh in the air and _promising_ he would never let a casualty die for his ignorance when he could have saved them. He stared at Nugget's internal architecture.

And recognized it.

He snapped his fingers. "Drift, I need you to run to the cargo bay. We need some of the supplies that Iredem shipped us with—look for the soft-packed box of solvents. Bring it to me."

He opened a toolbox and rifled through it for the smallest sampling needle he could find—one he normally would have used to pull sensornet biopsies. He needed to be sure. He steadied Nugget, two fingers framing the fermentation chamber, and slowly drew up a sample of the brine within. He dripped the liquid out onto a sampling pan and slid it into the monitor, waiting for the sample to vaporize and run through analysis.

Drift came running back, the box clutched tight to his chest. He thrust it out at Ratchet. "Here."

Ratchet set the box down and flipped the top open, checking the labels on the tops of the vials. Behind him, he could hear Drift praying. It'd have been annoying if he hadn't already solved the mystery. He found the vial he was looking for and put his finger over it as the analyzer chimed. He glanced up at the display and saw a familiar shape shimmering back at him.

"What is it?" Drift asked, interrupting himself.

"Water," Ratchet said. He popped the lid on the vial and lifted it to Nugget's mouth, pouring it a few drops at a time. "He's a fusion bot—he gets energy from the microbiome in his fermentation chambers. They live off the chemical reaction with the fuel he ingests, but they can't live without water and he can't live without them. I haven't seen a fusion bot since the invasion of Sessily."

Ratchet gently closed Nugget's chassis and offered him over to Drift. "Heat up your hands, just a little bit. They'll act as an incubator, speed up the microbiome coming out of dormancy."

Drift frowned at the tiny figure in his hands. "Why didn't he tell us?"

Ratchet shrugged. "I don't know, but the kid's lucky we had water on hand. I don't usually keep it around as a solvent, too reactive. Aerosolized water's how you get rust infections."

"But why didn't he _tell us_?" Drift asked plaintively.

Ratchet touched the back of his hand. "Little warmer than that, but not too much. I'm going to lay in a course adjustment, you keep an eye on him." He brushed past Drift and into the pilot's seat and started skimming the local directories for anything with an open-air market that wouldn't need more than a day's deviation from their flight path. He could about figure what had happened and he was sure Drift could too. But, like Ratchet, Drift didn't like the conclusion he'd drawn.

Nothing that could be done about that now.

"It's barely been three hours, we should go back to bed. Bring Nugget with you," he interrupted Drift's almost-voiced objection, "someone should be watching him anyway."

He put his hands on Drift's shoulders and walked him back to the berthroom and sat him down on the edge of the bed. He tested the temperature of his hands again and dragged the blanket up from the floor to wrap around Drift's shoulders. It wouldn't stay up right, so he pinned it in place with his arm.

"He's going to be fine," Ratchet said. "He could handle weeks of hibernation like that, though he probably doesn't know it."

"I knew he blamed himself. I should have tried harder to talk about it," Drift said. "He's so small."

"Just because he’s smaller than a sparkling doesn't mean he _is_ one. He's got feelings like you and me," Ratchet glanced up at the ceiling and sighed. "Maybe more like me."

"Like us both," Drift said. "We're quite a crew, the three of us."

 

* * *

 

 

It was a thin-air market, on the back of an old derelict that had since been turned into a fueling waystation. Once a fueling waystation opened an ecosystem of commerce inevitably followed. Some places were posh, formal space stations with landing bays and elevators and security guards. Some were old derelicts with thin-air markets clinging to their undersides.

Thin-air market wasn't a terribly creative name, but it stuck around as a warning for the oxygen-hungry organics who, when visiting, had to zip themselves up into respirator suits. Some of them had working artificial grav and a strong enough spaceshield to keep out debris, but there wasn't the budget for pressurizing an atmosphere.

Ratchet loved them.

Not for the seedy inhabitants or the dodgy selection and astronomical prices for staple goods. No, he liked the part where any sound of the market tended to be as muted and thin as the air that carried it. The people bustled, the vendors hawked goods all in blissful, beautiful quiet.

Nugget and Drift seemed to be enjoying themselves too. Drift had a bounce in his step, low grav letting him again dance between the crush of the crowd with his feet barely touching the ground. After a bit of indecision about leaving Nugget on the ship, they'd instead let him ride along. He was sitting on top of Drift's helm and peeking out over the ridge like a soldier peering over a gunner's barricade. Drift flitted from stand to stand, pointing things out to Nugget as he went. If Ratchet had stood close he would have been able to pick up the buzzy interchange of radio messages between the two of them, but he could see the enthusiasm from here.

He wasn't in a hurry to catch up; they’d radio if they needed him. He scoped out the market, eyeing the neon signs fighting for his attention. Then he set off down the lines of stalls in blissful quiet. There were shopkeepers waving to catch shoppers’ attention and people weaving and walking haphazardly in his way but that was fine, he could ignore all that—he was on his feet and outside the ship and nobody knew who he was.

It took a few tries to find someone who had water tucked away that was suitable for his purposes—of sufficient purity that it wouldn't interfere with the kid's symbiotic colonies. He haggled in scrawled messages on the shopkeep's touchscreen and walked away with a case of overpriced H2O tucked under his arm. He'd gotten too much, Nugget was so small that he couldn't possibly use all of that. But he'd sleep easier without risking another middle-of-the-night medical crisis.

Mission complete, he wandered over to one of the crude benches set up by the docking platforms to wait for Drift and Nugget.

He needed to get himself out of his head but he didn't know how to do it. He'd let himself get so wrapped up in his insecurities and neuroses that he didn't even notice that their tiny guest was letting himself waste away. And once they’d figured it out, it was Drift who’d managed to talk Nugget down from the edge. Ratchet had been utterly useless.

They needed him to look after them, they both did. But he couldn’t even look after himself.

»What are you thinking about when you get that expression on your face?« Drift asked as he flopped onto the bench next to Ratchet. He was wearing a hat, one that absolutely did not fit him, his finials stabbed through the black crushed velvet. Nugget was perched on the brim, his legs dangling over the edge. They were both smiling.

»What are you wearing?« Ratchet asked, pinching his nose to ward off the incoming processor-ache.

»It's a hat,« Drift grinned. »Nugget said I look dashing.«

»You look absurd.« Ratchet batted a hand at the oversized brim. »I've got what we came for, we should go now.«

Drift made a face. »Go? Oh, come on, Ratch. We're not on that tight of a schedule.« He tried to lean closer but only succeeded in nearly putting his ridiculous hat into Ratchet's optic. »Nugget's never gone shopping before, we should indulge. You could come along.«

»I'm fine right here, thanks.« Ratchet said.

»Aw, Ratch. It'll be fun. Like Hedonia!«

»You mean the Hedonia trip where I got robbed, you nearly blew our cover and made yourself sick on energon treats? That trip?«

»Okay, up you go,« Drift said, grabbing Ratchet's wrist and pulling him. Ratchet could have stayed down, but they didn't need to cause a scene. He let Drift and Nugget point out all the stalls selling fripperies they didn't need, watched Drift pick up thirty identical looking crystals as he assessed their "soothing energies" and let Drift buy energon treats that were sure to have Nugget bouncing off the walls of the shuttle once they were back aboard.

Drift rifled through the bag and pulled out a pink colored one with a victorious smile. He bit it in half and chewed contemplatively before holding up the other half for Ratchet. »Found your favorite flavor,« he said.

»Drift, I don't want your half-eaten food.«

»Ratch, I put your fuel in my mouth and you've been elbow deep in my fuel tank. How's _this_ gross after _that_?«

Ratchet rolled his optics but let Drift push the sweet candy between his lips. It _was_ his favorite flavor, sweet and simple that dissolved on your tongue with a bit of fizzle. He'd never mentioned that to Drift.

He unshuttered his optics to see Drift smiling at him and little Nugget covering his face with his hands, melting like an energon treat left out in the heat. Ratchet rolled his optics at both of them.

»We done yet?« He asked.

»Drift! Look!« Nugget chimed, pointing up above them. Ratchet craned his neck to see a red kite dancing in the solar winds just beyond the spaceshield. It wriggled and danced, little nanomachines built into the toy twisting in response to the varying solar radiation hitting its surface. Probably one of the shopkeepers trying to attract attention.

»It's beautiful,« Drift said. »Could you make it dance like that?«

Nugget frowned. »With my...«

»With your abilities,« Drift said. He reached up and offered Nugget a hand to step onto. »You told me that you could control nanomachines anywhere. Why not a kite?«

Nugget glanced over at Ratchet guiltily. »I can't.«

Ratchet sighed. »I keep telling you, kid. I'm not scared of you _or_ what you can do. And I'm not mad at you either. If you want to, go ahead.«

Nugget hesitantly reached his hands up towards the sky and, with a wiggle of his fingers, set the kite above wiggling back and forth. Nugget grinned. »That was me!« He chimed. »That was me!«

»We saw.« Ratchet said.

»Make it do a loop,« Drift said.

Waving his hands like a conductor leading an orchestra, Nugget brought the kite around in a loop, and then another. He stopped looking back at them for reassurance and started making the red interlocking segments dance and weave against the starry backdrop in increasingly complicated patterns. Behind him, Drift winked one optic gold at Ratchet and squeezed his shoulder.

»He's going to be fine,« Drift said.

 

* * *

 

 

When Drift showed up that night he asked the question Ratchet had been dreading ever since he decided he would tell the truth.

"How did Ambulon die?"

"I don't want to tell you."

"Ratchet, even if you don't tell me, once we get back to the ship I'll be able to find _someone_ to—"

"They wouldn’t be able to tell you the half of it, because I didn't tell anyone about what happened to me. That's what I'm trying to say—I don't want to tell you what happened because you deserve to know the truth. The whole truth."

"Why?"

"You'll know when I get there. Look, there are things that have happened to you that you don't run around telling everyone about. Things that, if people knew, it'd change the way they treated you. Now, I'm handy with a gun and I can take care of myself, but I'm not a warrior like you or Cyclonus. Sometimes I can't stop people from hurting me. I don't dwell on that. I don't want that to be what people think of when they think of me."

"Ratchet, nobody would ever think you were weak. You're the strongest person I know."

"Yeah, that's because I have a _carefully cultivated reputation_ that I have built by not blabbing every time something happens to me. I know, this isn't about me. It's about Ambulon and First Aid and a lot of other people—"

"First Aid?"

"He's not dead. I just mean he's involved. This whole story is involved, I barely know where to start."

"Well, when did it all happen? When did Ambulon die?"

"The day after you left."

"What?"

"Let me go a little further back. Magnus isn't dead."

He explained about the disappearing Magnus armor, the pursuit through the portal, the appearance of Luna I. Then landing on Luna I, the hot spot and the Decepticons.

"We run and most of the crew escapes—not for long, as it'll later turn out—but I get hit and go down. Then Pharma shows up."

"Pharma?"

"Yeah, turns out he wasn't dead and he wasn't real happy with me. He wasn't all there, either."

"Pharma _died_."

"We left him for dead, an important distinction that I would have rectified back on Delphi if I hadn't been busy with hand transplants and curing plagues. If you leave someone for dead, there's always a chance that someone will swoop in and rescue them. That someone, in this case, was Tyrest."

Ratchet started explaining Tyrest and what he'd been doing and—well, he gave "why" his best shot. It was partway through that explanation that he remembered with a sickening lurch that he was going to have to explain what happened to the Circle of Light. He almost glossed that part, just to put it off for a few more minutes, but forced himself to carry on.

"Tyrest was the one who had the Circle of Light kidnapped. He needed test subjects for his experiments and, thanks to Star Saber playing lackey, he knew how to get to the Circle of Light."

"What, just him? He's not a god, he's basically a _lawyer_ —"

"I don't know how he did it, but he had Star Saber, Lockdown and his posse of Decepticons, Pharma and these mechanical soldiers he'd built as his own personal army—he called them Legislators. And somehow he captured the Circle of Light. Before we even showed up he'd killed nearly half of them—some on testing the killswitch, some he broke down for parts to build more Legislators."

" _Primus._ "

Ratchet offered Drift his hand and squeezed. As best he could, he explained the rest of what had happened with Tyrest. The Legislator attack on the ship. The killswitch. The portal. Tailgate's improbable last-minute save and Rodimus sacrificing the Matrix to stop the killswitch. He watched Drift's face flicker through what looked like all the stages of grief and was certain he was going to say something after that last revelation, but he waved his hand for Ratchet to continue, so he did.

"And then First Aid...aw, shit, I've gotten ahead of myself. Pharma started laughing about the way Ambulon died and First Aid shot him. That poor kid."

"How did you and First Aid get there? Wait, how did he and Ambulon get involved—they weren't part of the landing party?"

"Yeah. Like I said, our part in this whole mess was insignificant and fucked up. So I get knocked down and Pharma shows up. Before he, uh, helps me offline I get the distinct impression that he's only been working with Tyrest in exchange for eventually getting his hands on me." Ratchet shrugged. "We were close, once. Never as close as he'd wanted. My "betrayal" at Delphi was apparently the tipping point into actual obsession."

"What did he do?"

"Torture, at first." Ratchet hesitated, gauging Drift's reaction. "He stripped me down to my helm and lifecord and started working on my spark with a laser scalpel."

" _Primus_."

"It wasn't great but—"

"But what? You're telling me you've never told anyone else what Pharma did to you?"

"Drift, keep it down, you're going to wake Nugget up."

"You were tortured by a former friend and you never told anyone. You let—Primus—you let them take you on Iredem knowing something like that could happen again. And then it did. I can't believe you. I cannot _believe_ you—"

"Drift, it's okay. I'm okay."

"Stop saying that!"

Drift knocked Ratchet over onto the bed and climbed up to shove his face into Ratchet's. "It wasn't okay and it _won't ever be_ okay. Things like that shouldn't happen to people like you. Things like that shouldn't happen to people at all but not _ever_ to you."

Ratchet awkwardly patted Drift on the back. "I survived. And I'm not completely fragged up beyond repair. It isn't the worst thing that's ever happened to me."

Drift curled his hands around the top edge of Ratchet's chestplate. "What is worse than that?"

"I'm trying to tell you." He blew out a breath and looked away from Drift's burning optics. "So, like I said, Pharma's not all there anymore. He's there to hurt me, but he's not interested in killing me. He's furious that I've stolen his hands and he wants them back. And he claims he can't just take them because maybe I've wired them to explode. And I still don't know why he didn't just take them—sane or not, he's still a damned good surgeon—but I figured if I could get back in my body I could get the upper hand. So I offered him a deal."

Ratchet lifted his hand from Drift's back and held it in the path of the underberth lights, looking at the triplicate shadows it threw onto the wall beyond, huge and distorted. "I offered him a competition of surgical skill, winner keeps the hands. He accepts. And then he brings in First Aid and Ambulon, who he had swooped up from the Lost Light because of me."

"He tells them that it was my idea, that he's going to cut them and we'll compete to see who can put them together. I try to take it back, I try to reassure them that whatever he does, I'll fix."

"And then he cuts Ambulon down the middle, bisecting his brain module and spark. He died before he hit the ground."

Ratchet inhaled, a rattling breath that seemed to catch in his intake. He shifted back to look at Drift, who was staring at him with dull optics and an expressionless look at his face. "That's what's worse."

"Pharma knew you," Drift said slowly. "And he wanted to hurt you. You were probably being...you. Being all stoic and not caring what he did to you but he _knew_ you'd care about someone else. He was just waiting for you to say something he could twist into an excuse."

"That might be true," Ratchet said. He brought his hand back to rest on Drift's back. He thought, again, forever, about the roots of Pharma's jealousy, his obsession. _If only he hadn't been CMO, if only he hadn't accepted the hands, if only he'd felt something back..._

Quietly, he told Drift the rest of the story. About burying his hands in Ambulon's slowly-congealing corpse and building a weapon for their escape. About what First Aid had said to him. About everything that came afterwards: discovering Minimus Ambus, Tailgate's cure, First Aid's collapse after killing Pharma. He told Drift about Dai Atlas and about Star Saber's escape.

That last revelation made Drift quiet again, full of emotions Ratchet couldn't hope to understand. He didn't think Drift had ever liked Dai Atlas. But Dai Atlas _was_ the Circle of Light. Without him and without the city the remaining survivors were just refugees, the same as anyone else.

He told Drift everything he could remember about Luna I and even after he'd run out of words, Drift didn't let go.

 

* * *

 

 

Ratchet paused and read the sentence over again. _Drift wasn’t going to like that_. He looked out over the viewscreen at the field of stars beyond. The shuttle wasn't FTL-capable, their voyage to Kirtac 9 would be another few days. But they were getting close and Ratchet was getting nervous.

Last time he hadn't been prepared. Drift had teased him about it a few times but he wasn't wrong. Ratchet hadn't been adequately prepared for the dangers and Drift had gotten hurt because of it. Ratchet was glad Drift had never asked _how_ Ratchet ended up so horribly unprepared, because he was damned if he was going to admit how scared he'd been that Drift would slip through his fingers again.

But anyway, this time he was going to be prepared. There wasn't much information on Nugget's family—his creators. Ratchet had found a single news article, from the time of Nugget's disappearance. It spent a lot of time talking about the scientific marvel of Nugget's creation and the marginal economy of farming in that region of Kirtac 9. Apparently he'd been in charge of controlling the roving nanomachine swarms and stopping them from robbing the fields of crops. There wasn't a name listed for Nugget, but there wasn't much information on his family at all. Property records still listed them as owning the farm, so that was where Ratchet intended to begin their search.

It would have been simpler to just call them up, but Kirtac 9 wasn't network-linked the same way some galactic planets were. It was low tech and, frankly, poor. They were agrarian, barely making enough in trade sales with neighboring planets to pay off the overwhelming debts they'd picked up after a war with a neighboring moon.

That was the source of the problem he'd just noticed in the Galactic Visitors Guide. Ratchet gathered up his datapad and went to find Drift and the kid.

They were back in the cargo bay, making a mess of things. Drift had pulled half the medical supplies back out of their crates and had apparently misappropriated them for craft supplies—he and Nugget appeared to be making little lanterns out of wiring and colored gossamer membranes. Drift was humming a tune under his breath as he worked—sitting on the crate with Nugget, again in his holomatter form shrunk down to be of scale with the kid.

"What are you doing?" Ratchet demanded, datapad momentarily forgotten. "I gave you _specific instructions_ not to be gadding about in holomatter form until I cleared you! What do I need to do? Do I need to weld a holomatter inhibitor cuff onto you?"

Drift looked up and rolled his eyes. "I'm fine, Ratchet. You said that weeks ago—and now I'm all better."

"Who's the doctor here? You don't get to "clear" yourself," Ratchet said.

Drift quirked his fingers in little mock finger-quotes. "Aye, aye, doctor." He stood up and winked out of sight and back into his body. Drift put his hands on his shoulders as if to remove his chestplate. "Well, why don't you go ahead and clear me now?"

Ratchet cleared the room in three steps and pulled Drift's hand away from the clasp. "No irradiating the tiny robot," He ordered. "You might toast Nugget's sensory system."

Drift scrunched up his face. "There's no need to be a prude, Ratch."

"We didn't _all_ grow up singing drinking songs in Dead End," Ratchet grumbled, finally remembering what the tune Drift had been humming went to. "And I'm _not_ being a prude, I'm expressing reasonable concern about the effects of spark radiation on Nugget."

Drift laughed. "Sure, Ratch. And how do _you_ know that song?"

"Did you forget that we met in Dead End? You don't run a clinic in Dead End and not pick up a bit of the local culture. There was a bit there where—"

"No you didn't!" Nugget piped up.

"Hmm?" Ratchet looked over and caught Nugget's outraged face and crossed arms. Drift was also frowning at him.

"You met on the battlefield! Drift _saved_ you," Nugget insisted. "He said so."

"You could hear what we said to Linead?" Ratchet said with a wince.

"Both are true," Drift interrupted. "We did meet on the battlefield—that's when we met properly. But years earlier, during the war, Ratch saved my life." Drift draped his arm over Ratchet's shoulder and smiled. "My hero. He ran a clinic for no-good mechs like me and I was one of his many, many patients. Ratchet was busy, of course, so we didn't really get to properly meet back then. We passed each other like ships in the night—and didn't realize we'd seen each other before until after we were already together."

Ratchet winced at the layer cake of lies Drift had just cobbled together. "Drift, let's not."

"He's just shy," Drift said, winking at Nugget. Nugget giggled and Ratchet bore the attention. _Less than a week and they'd be free of the kid and the lie and everything could go back to normal._

"Look, I came back here for a reason. There's something we need to talk about."

"What's that?" Drift asked, catching Ratchet's tone and frowning.

Ratchet passed over his datapad, the relevant section highlighted. "As part of a peace treaty, all visitors to Kirtac 9 have to travel through a security screening conducted by officials from their neighbouring moon. No visitors bringing any weaponry are permitted. It looks like you're going to have to leave the swords behind again."

Drift's hand darted back to the Great Sword he was wearing on his back, even though he was in the shuttle bay teaching arts and crafts to the kid. "I'm not leaving them."

"Well, I'm not causing an intergalactic incident, so we'll have to think of something," Ratchet said. "Guess you could stay up here and watch the ship, I could drop Nugget off at home..."

Drift shook his head. "Unacceptable."

"And what’s your solution?"

"I don't know," Drift said. "But I'm not leaving you and I'm not going without them."

Ratchet pinched the bridge of his nose. "Great. Well, you two can go back to playing around. Causing headaches. I'll be in the cabin, reading."

Not his most graceful exit, but at least he didn't use any of the curses he'd learned from his Dead End clinic in front of the kid.

 

* * *

 

Ratchet paused in the doorway to the cargo bay for a moment. The words he'd been about to say evaporated on his tongue.

Drift had cleared the space, put away the arts and crafts projects and pushed all the crates to the walls. The lights were dimmed and the floor swept clean and Drift had his back to the door, his swords in his hands. Combat practice, Ratchet assumed.

Drift raised his arms out to the sides and kept his swords level, head bowed. His great sword glinted with energy, even though it still rested in the sheath on his back. Ratchet had never noticed before how the sheath resembled a pair of wings encircling the Great Sword. _Wing's_ Great Sword, as Drift would have corrected him.

Drift stepped forward slowly and pivoted on one foot, bringing the swords off to the side and then in. When he turned again to face the door Ratchet assumed the show was over, but Drift had his optics off and didn't react to his presence.

He stepped slowly through what could only have been described as a dance, moving smoothly to one knee and then back to his feet, swords reaching for invisible opponents and then sweeping past them like a seeker's contrails.

Drift sheathed one sword and pulled a knife the length of Ratchet's forearm from the plating at his thigh. He knocked the knife against his sword as he stepped his feet out into a wider stance. When resumed his dance it was different, each forward movement accentuated with a stomp of his leading foot, each backwards movement with a clack of his sword against the knife. He spiraled lower and lower, guarding onto his knees and then rising back up onto his feet. Then, throwing his head back with a grin, he tossed the knife up into the air, shifted his sword to the other hand and plucked the knife back out of the air.

He mirrored the knife dance, sliding through the movements faster this time, then swapped the knife again for his sword and began the first dance again. He was still gaining speed but Ratchet could see the absolute precision, the delicacy of each flick of the blade's edge and shuffle of his feet, like he was stepping along a path carved deep into the floor. Drift's fans hummed and his footfalls grew increasing loud as he sped up again. He passed right to the point where Ratchet wondered if he should say something and then threw down his swords with a clatter.

"Drift?" Ratchet asked. "You alright?"

Drift, panting, rolled his head over to blink at Ratchet. He smiled. "I thought I sensed a friendly aura." His optics zeroed in on the glasses in Ratchet's hands. "Is one of those for me?"

"Yeah," Ratchet said. He walked over and offered up one of the glasses. "I promise I didn't drink out of it."

Drift huffed a laugh. "That was one time." He took it and drank, tipped the glass back until there was nothing left. He wiggled his glossa in the empty glass, trying to chase the last few droplets. When he finally straightened up his face darkened under Ratchet's scrutiny. "Sorry," he said inanely. "It was good."

"I have no idea what you're apologizing for," Ratchet said. "Where's the kid?"

"He's in my room," Drift said. "I'd mentioned that on Cybertron some people use lanterns to memorialize the dead and he decided he wanted to do something for the people who died on Iredem. I vetoed the idea of him going outside the spaceship to light them," Drift said, with an air of _look, look, I've been a responsible adult_.

"So now he's lighting fires in your room."

Drift smiled. "Now he's filling small lanterns with fluorescing gas membranes so they glow. I'm not setting fires inside a spacecraft. Even Decepticons are too civilized to light fires inside spaceships."

Drift poked his finger into his glass to steal out the last little bit. "Did you notice I'd missed my last fueling or is this a social call?"

"Both," Ratchet said. "If you're not busy, I figured we should clear you for gadding about as a holomatter avatar before you break doctor’s orders again. I realized you might not want to come by the cabin to get your fuel while I was there. Do you want this one?" He held up the other glass. "I'm really not burning much sitting and reading."

"I shouldn't," Drift said, licking his lips.

"Look, I'm your doctor. And I promise you, you're not overfueling. If you want it, have it." He held it up. "I'd rather fuel while recharging anyway."

Drift took the glass and squinted at Ratchet. "Is this you...taking care of me? Is this you caring? Did you bring a second glass over as a scheme to make me drink them both?"

Ratchet shrugged. "Someone has to look after you. Come on, pack up the swords, I just need a quick checkup and then you can holoavatar your spark out."

"I'm sleeping in your room. I will _make sure_ you sleep and actually refuel," Drift warned, swiping up his swords and following along at Ratchet's heels.

"Yeah, yeah. It'd be easier to sleep if you didn't _climb on top of me_ you know. Don't know when you got so dang clingy."

Drift laughed. "About the time I realized you wouldn't stab me for it."

 

* * *

 

"What happened after you left Luna I?"

Ratchet sighed. "Drift, I agree that you deserve to know what happened. But do you really want to know it all _now_? I'm not sure rushing through a year in two nights is the best idea."

"Not knowing is worse," Drift said seriously. "I thought it'd be better to space it out—I was wrong. As long as I don't know, anyone could be dead. Anything could have happened."

Ratchet thought it over. "There aren't any other dead crewmembers. There was Ambulon. There was Dai Atlas and the other members of the Circle of Light. There was the quantum duplicate versions of us who died, if you want to count that. And there was Trailcutter. Everyone else on board was fine when I left. Better even—Magnus is back on his feet, the second Rewind joined the crew and Fortress Maximus and Red Alert are both manning the Luna I outpost together."

"There's something you're not telling me, something big."

Ratchet frowned. "There's something you're not _asking_ me about, which is making me suspicious. I need you to tell me something. How much news coming out of Cybertron have you kept up with?"

Drift winced. "None of it?"

"Yeah, I figured that. Look—wait one more night. I'll pull together something for you to read. Because _what came next_ isn't really a thing I can tell you in one evening." Ratchet dimmed the lights.

"You can't leave me hanging like that. Ratch. _Raaaatch_."

"And I quote: you, a few hours ago—"I will _make sure_ you recharge and actually refuel." This is me, recharging. Refueling. If you can't wait a few hours you can search it on the net."

 

* * *

 

Ratchet could tell Drift _hadn't_ looked it up when the next day he woke Ratchet up obscenely early by sharpening his swords in the room where Ratchet was trying to recharge. Half asleep, Ratchet threw something at him which turned out to be his laser pistol. Luckily, Drift caught it.

He swung the gun on his finger. "You do keep the safety on while you're sleeping, right Ratch?"

"Keep playing with it and find out," Ratchet said, swinging his legs over the side of the berth. "You have an entire room. Shoo."

 

* * *

 

After they'd next tucked Nugget into his nest, below the floating constellation of memorial lanterns, Ratchet offered Drift a datapad. "Here. I can tell you what happened on board, but before I do that, I need you to read a little. This is mostly pulled from Magnus's ship's log, but I added in some news articles and a bit of commentary. I'm going to hang out in the cabin while you read. Maybe have a drink. After that, we can talk."

 

* * *

 

Ratchet knew Drift was coming when he heard the door slam. "Starscream? They elected _Starscream_?"

Ratchet sipped on his glass of Engex. "Are you sure you don't want me to replace your FIM chip? I don't recommend taking that revelation sober."

"Starscream." Drift repeated. " _Unbelievable_."

"Oh, just you wait," Ratchet said. "Keep reading."

 

* * *

 

The door slammed again and Ratchet winced. The doors on the ship were not built for slamming. They were built for automatically sliding open and their internal mechanisms were probably breakable. And more importantly—"Nugget's trying to sleep, Drift, keep it down."

Drift didn't say anything. Ratchet frowned at him, a little concerned. "All the weird Dead Universe gibberish getting to you? I don't understand half of that, and the half I understand is only because I sat in on the meeting where Percy tried to dumb down the science enough for Rodimus to understand it."

"He's alive?" Drift said, voice shaking.

"Who?"

"Who do you _think_? Who let him be an Autobot?"

Oh. _Him_. "Bumblebee let him."

Drift deflated slightly. "I’m sorry for your loss." It was no secret that Drift had never been close to Bumblebee, who'd in turn never quite gotten over Deadlock. He'd been Ratchet's friend, but Ratchet had never approved of the way he'd treated Drift like he was expendable.

"Thank you," Ratchet said. "How far did you get?"

"Optimus wants to put him on trial."

"Keep reading." Ratchet said. "And go slower, I'm not nearly drunk enough yet."

 

* * *

 

Drift came back too soon. "Is there subspace messaging on this ship? I need to send Optimus Prime a strongly worded message."

"Please do not curse out Optimus over subspace relay," Ratchet said.

"That is my ship. I bought that ship with my money and I gave it to Rodimus. The Lost Light is not _beholden_ to whatever Autobot military structure is still clinging to life on Cybertron. He can't install a captain on my ship!"

Ratchet grimaced. "He asked Roddy and what do you think the kid said? Was he supposed to turn him down?"

"Unbelievable." Drift huffed. "Absolutely unbelievable. Do people know this? Do people know that _Megatron_ is out there captaining a starship, free to do as he pleases?"

"Technically he's not free to do as he pleases. Technically he's been released on conditional bail and will be arrested the moment he steps out of line," Ratchet said.

"Right." Drift sighed. "How many of the crew—how did the crew take it?"

"Well, not well, obviously. Some of the crew elected to stay on Cybertron instead, though not a lot. Megatron on the Lost Light, Starscream on Cybertron...it's not like you could stay home and avoid being lorded over by a former Decepticon. And Megatron at least acts like he's a reformed character. It's been strange, working with him. I'd never seen him back when he was...you know."

"When he was the mech Orion Pax developed that schoolboy crush on?" Drift suggested.

"When he was the mech who wanted to change the world. The crew was waiting for him to go, you know, _Megatron_ on us. But he never did. He's quiet. He spends his free time in his room thinking. He teaches two lecture seminars and people actually go to them because he's a good teacher. He reads Ultra Magnus's memos and refers to them in our staff meetings. We _have_ staff meetings. Nobody knows what to make of it."

Drift frowned. "That's it?"

"That's it what?"

"There wasn't a mutiny? Nobody's tried to assassinate him? He hasn't executed any members of the crew? People just...go to lectures and follow his orders?"

"Not happily," Ratchet protested.

"Is Roddy okay?" Drift asked, beginning to pace. He drummed his hands on his thighs as he walked. "You said he was captain, you said he was okay. You weren't lying, right?"

"Well," Ratchet took a sip of his engex. Third glass. Things were getting a little soft around the edges and the room was feeling comfortably warm. "I stretched the truth a little. Technically his title is "co-captain" now."

"What does that mean?" Drift said, throwing up his hands.

"It means Rodimus threw a fit when Optimus tried to unseat him as captain," Ratchet said to his glass.

"Rodimus needed to be captain. He _needs_ to be captain. I didn't give—I didn't through all of that so that our ship could become the vehicle of Megatron's redemption tour."

Ratchet shrugged. "Yeah, from all the way out here it does sound absurd. When I was on the ship...I almost bought it."

Drift paused his pacing, hands squeezed into fists. He didn't meet Ratchet's eyes. "Is Rodimus really still captain? Is he just a figurehead or are they actually," he made a disbelieving noise in the back of his throat, "sharing leadership?"

Ratchet _hmmed_. "He sulked at first. Me and Magnus did our best to stand in—I never wanted to be third officer but, yeah. He seems to have found his footing again after the time travel incident."

Drift stared at him but it looked like _Drift_ was somewhere very far away. "I'm going to go meditate now," he said flatly.

"I was being serious, I'm willing to replace your FIM chip if you'd rather get drunk," Ratchet offered his retreating back.

Drift waved a dismissive hand. The door clicked closed behind him. That hadn't gone as well as he hoped. But Ratchet had gotten months to cope with the shock of it all; Drift had taken it in over a few hours. Ratchet didn't know what Drift intended to do, but he doubted meditating could make the universe make sense again. Either way, Ratchet didn't expect he'd be getting back in the room that night—that was fine. He had work to do.

 

* * *

 

"Nightmare again?" Ratchet asked, as Nugget toddled over into the cabin and began batting at Ratchet's ankle for a boost up. Nugget nodded as Ratchet lifted him up onto the console. Nugget still didn't talk to him much—he _could_ talk, he just didn't.

That was fine by Ratchet.

"Well, you can help me out over here," he said. "We've gotta keep quiet though. Drift's "meditating"."

Nugget nodded very seriously.

"So, I'm trying to find a way around our sword problem. Not because I care or anything, but trying to talk Drift into something is such a hassle. People act like I'm the stubborn one...I've read up on import law, trying to find us a hole big enough to wiggle Drift's thirty-seven swords through. Or even just the one. Not a lot of options."

Ratchet tapped his chin. "There's a reasonable case to be made that the swords could act as historical artifacts or even "religious relics" but these dang treaty makers didn't make an exception for those things. I'm not sure if my integrated medkit will make it through the scanners," Ratchet said.

"He could turn into a car?" Nugget suggested.

"They probably search vehicles for contraband too," Ratchet said. "If only Brainstorm was here, he could turn the swords into shrinky-dinks and then they'd be under the minimum blade length."

"Make them look like something else?"

Ratchet sighed. Maybe he'd had too much to drink after all. "I don't know what you'd make them look like. They look a lot like swords. And Drift isn't going to let us mess with them."

"We'll think of something," Nugget said, patting Ratchet on the hand.

 

* * *

 

 

They were three days out and Ratchet was ready in every way but one. He knew what crops they harvested on Kirtac 9. He had memorized an atlas of all their major roads, he'd downloaded a book on their criminal code and spent time researching all the known dangerous wildlife he could find references on. He had their road trip planned out down to the menus at the pit stops en route.

It was that last fucking detail that was making him seriously consider faking an engine problem to give him more time to think.

Drift hadn't asked Ratchet to tell him more. He'd been downright reserved after the Megatron revelation. Finally Ratchet had all the space he wanted. He’d wanted more space. He didn't like getting what he wanted.

For lack of better things to do, he was writing up a summary of what had happened next on the ship, unbelievable as it sounded. Everything on the quantum duplicates and time travel shenanigans he'd gotten second hand—mostly from Skids and Riptide, a little bit from Rodimus and the trial. He wasn't sure if or when Drift would want to hear the rest of it, but he wasn't going to bungle it as badly as he had all his previous attempts at making sense of their nonsense lives.

He realized he'd skipped over the coffin part entirely and went back to add that in. Because nothing said "reassuring" like a coffin made of engine parts with your living friend's dead body in it.

Ratchet stopped and put down his datapad. There was an idea taking shape in his head and, make no mistake, it was a very dumb idea. It also might just end up working.

"Drift, get your aft out here," he yelled, banging on the door as he stomped past to the cargo bay. Plenty of crates, that could work as raw material. He'd never built a coffin, but apparently Drift ought to know how to.

 

* * *

 

 

"I'm not faking my own death to get through customs."

"Keep up—I'm not suggesting you fake your death. That wouldn't make any sense—why would I be taking a random dead robot to Kirtac 9? I'm suggesting you fake _Nugget's_ death."

Nugget raised his hand.

"Yes?" Ratchet asked, pacing the cargo bay.

"Why am I dead?" Nugget asked.

Ratchet sighed. "Let me start over. The people who run customs at the Kirtac 9 spaceport are from the moon next door. They don't allow a long list of things onto the planet below: drugs, certain plant imports, weapons, etcetera. On the list of things always allowed: repatriated remains of citizens from Kirtac 9. Nugget, you're on an official list of missing persons. I checked the record and it only describes you as a humanoid mechanical, no mention of scale or identifying features. Hence, if we put Drift in a coffin there will be no way for the customs agents to _prove_ Drift isn't you."

"Why are we putting me in a coffin?" Drift asked.

"Traditional Spectralist coffins are made from objects near the scene of death, yes? So Nugget's out in space and converts to Spectralism. Then he dies near something radioactive, so we have to use shielded alloys on the outside of the coffin to transport it."

"I don't follow."

"Don't tell me you've never smuggled anything before," Ratchet said. "The shielded alloys will force customs to conduct a "visuals only" inspection and probably a cursory one at best given the threat of radiation. We hide your dumb swords in the walls of the coffin."

Drift smiled. "Ratchet."

"Don't."

" _Ratchet._ "

"No hugging," Ratchet said, putting up a hand to ward Drift off.

Drift ducked underneath, loped behind him and grabbed him around the waist. "Ha!" He crowed. "You do care!"

"What was I supposed to do, let you challenge a customs agent to a duel?"

"I'd have figured something out," Drift said.

"Really? What were your potential ideas? Your definition of a "good idea" has been historically...less than great. I didn't want to risk it. "

"I rescued you!"

"You once decided the best thing to do while having a "seizure" was to hide in an elevator shaft. Your idea for finding the Knights was to hike through mordant infested space muck to ask some old people if they knew their forwarding address!"

"You're just being grumpy to cover for the fact that you admitted to caring," Drift said, slipping back under Ratchet's arm to look around the space. "Okay, building a coffin...I'm seeing a few issues with your plan, Ratch. What are we going to do with the coffin?"

"Well, figured I'd be riding in alt mode anyway to carry Nugget to our destination. We'll just load the coffin in the back."

"You turn into an _ambulance_ , Ratch. Won't that seem suspicious?"

"Believe it or not, some medical conventions aren't universal. Just because we all know that I turn into an ambulance doesn't mean anybody on Kirtac 9 knows that."

"Second objection—I don't want to lay in a coffin and pretend to be dead."

"You're not. You do _not_ get to act—I don't trust you not to start laughing during the inspection. No, you had the right idea on Iredem—if you go to holomatter form it'll increase the verisimilitude of our "dead body" routine."

"Wait—if you're in alt mode and I'm holomatter, I get to drive!"

" _No._ I am not letting you drive me, you drive like a maniac. I'll be in holomatter form too and _I_ will be driving. You can have shotgun."

Drift made a face. "You're no fun at all."

"Yep, that's me, no fun at all. Let me use my powers of "not being any fun" to get us back on topic: how do we build a coffin?"

 

* * *

 

Something touched his shoulder and Ratchet startled.

"It's me," Drift said, leaning over to pass him a glass of warmed energon. "You should refuel."

"I'm fine," Ratchet said as he took the glass. "Do you think we're going to get done in time? We're already on the approach, flight control will notice if we delay."

"We'll be fine," Drift said. Gracefully, he stepped over the side of the coffin and wiggled his way into it. He crossed his arms over his chest and posed cartoonishly with his tongue sticking out. "Very homey," he said. "Looks good from inside."

"Stop fooling around," Ratchet said. He sat back and took a sip, humming with pleasure as the bite of engex in the glass hit his glossa. "Don't make me come in there."

"Oh, that is not a threat. I would _love_ to see you try," Drift teased. He grinned at Ratchet, but sat up out of the coffin. He got out and prised up the false floor to check on his Great Sword, then smoothed it back down. "We're doing fine, Ratch. General framing is done, secret compartments are done, all we need is to coat it in your fancy sensor deflecting stuff and do the ceremonial carving."

"And prep the body," Ratchet said.

"Prep the what now?"

"Well, when you activate your holomatter generator you'll go _limp_ but that's not necessarily the same as _dead_. We need to cloak your lifesigns. Sparkshield, obviously. But I figure that to the untrained eye, cold is the most important indicator for dead. So I need to prep you so we can put you on ice."

"What if we didn't and said we did?" Drift asked, sitting down next to Ratchet and leaning over to poke his finger in his drink. Ratchet pulled it away.

"Do you want to trick them or do you want to get arrested for _trying_ to trick them?"

"Why don't you go in the coffin?" Drift suggested.

"I would love to see you fit a coffin in your alt mode," Ratchet said. "Stop trying to steal my drink, you just gave it to me."

"I figured you would share!" Drift said, leaning across Ratchet's lap to grab at it. "I made it, it's only fair."

"Make your own," Ratchet said.

Drift pouted. "I don't like being cold. You should let me have your drink to make it up to me."

"The drink you just gave me?"

"Mm-hmm."

"You are _ruthless_ ," Ratchet said, handing it over.

"I just like tricking you into showing your softer side, you big softie," Drift said as he took a sip. He saw Ratchet's grab coming a mile away and rolled off of him, somehow keeping the glass upright. "Careful, you'll spill it."

"I do not have a "softer side"," Ratchet protested. Deciding he'd rather redeem his reputation than get the glass back, he tackled Drift and knocked them both to the ground, spilling sweet spiked engex all over Drift.

Drift started laughing, and Ratchet took the opening to pick him up and dump him back in the coffin. He swung the lid closed and sat on it. "I do _not_ have a softer side," he repeated, thumping his fist on the coffin lid for emphasis. "And, for the record? I also do not need _cheering up_. I am onto you, Drift, this sudden rush of "goofy pranks" and "being nice" is obviously a ploy to cheer me up. Which is obviously unnecessary because I am fine." He punctuated the last three words with a solid three thumps on the coffin lid.

"Like fuck you're fine," Drift said. "Now let me out of here or your clever plan is going to stink like spiked engex."

"Just for that, you can stay in there till we arrive." Ratchet said, crossing his arms over his chest. In the box, Drift laughed, clearly seeing how empty that threat was. He didn't say anything when Ratchet let him out and offered him a hand up.

Drift let Ratchet bully him backwards towards the washracks, still laughing and trying to plaster Ratchet with sticky handprints. Ratchet saw Nugget almost a moment too late and dragged Drift towards him before he could stomp on their tiny passenger. Drift's optics widened in confusion.

"Awwww," Nugget said, covering his face in his hands. "You two are so cute."

Ratchet let Drift back down so he could more properly facepalm. "Drift, I told you to _limit his media intake_."

"Unlimited television is the right of all sentient beings," Drift said.

"That is untrue. That is deeply untrue."

"Do you think my parents are going to be fun in-love like you guys?" Nugget asked. "Or do you think they're going to be _dramatic_ in love like the people in the movies? I hope they're fun."

Ratchet lifted his hand away from his face and stared at the floor. _One more day. Just one more day._

"Go wash that off," he ordered. "We're finishing the coffin and then everyone is going to bed. It's the big day tomorrow, we could all use some rest."

 

* * *

 

"We are telling him the truth."

"Why?" Drift threw up his arms. "It's literally one more day and then we'll drop him off and he'll never see us again. What does it matter for one more day?"

"It matters that we're _lying_ to him!" Ratchet hissed. _It matters that you're breaking my heart._

"You were okay with it a few days ago."

"No, a few days ago you bullied me into saying yes. I was not okay with it then either."

"I don't understand why telling the truth matters so much to you."

"I don't understand why lying to him matters so much to _you_ ," Ratchet shot back.

Drift's face twisted and he looked away. Then he jolted, tipping his chin towards the door and pausing for a moment in perfect stillness. "Oh no," he whispered.

Two steps carried him to the door and then the bright lights of the hall were shining in on them. Nugget ran from the sliding door, hands clamped over his audio pickups. "I didn't hear anything!" He cried.

"Nugget!" Drift said, bolting after him. "It's not what you think."

"I don't think anything! I didn't hear anything!" Nugget wailed.

Ratchet followed the circus out into the hallway, where he found Drift cradling a sobbing Nugget in his hands. Ratchet crossed his arms over his chest. _This was what came of lying to people._

"Nugget, you're safe. You can trust us, we would never hurt you," Drift promised.

"I was just scared and—" Nugget sniffed, "—and the dream came back and I wanted—I didn't know you'd be talking about the secret!"

"Nugget, me and Drift aren't sparkmates," Ratchet said. "I'm sorry we lied. We just wanted to trick the doctors into letting us stay together and we couldn't figure out how to break the truth to you."

"I know that!" Nugget said plaintively. "You're _terrible_ actors. Linead and Mr. Thiesk knew too."

"Oh." Ratchet felt rather off-balance. "You knew?"

"But you love each other," Nugget whined. "You _should_ be together. I thought, if you thought I didn't know and had to pretend...maybe you'd realize that?"

"Nugget, me and Drift aren't in love," Ratchet said, kneeling to get on his level. "There are a lot of ways to love someone, but me and Drift aren't in love _like that_."

"But you said—"

"I'm sorry if I hurt you." Ratchet said to the room at large. "I guess since the jig's up you can sleep in your own berthroom after all, Drift."

He fled.

 

* * *

 

Ratchet finished the docking sequence and walked to the back of the shuttle. "We're cleared, let's get this show on the road."

Drift shivered. "My body is freezing, Ratchet."

 _No more "Ratch", apparently._ "You're fine," Ratchet said. He reached into the ice bath and lifted Drift's limp body. Liquid nitrogen wafted off his frame in plumes, obscuring the work they'd done carefully buffing him with thermal protectant and then grey primer. Ratchet settled him in the coffin and shut the lid. Next he dragged the coffin over to their makeshift ramp and shook out the stiffness in his shoulders. They had a bit of a drive ahead of them, after they cleared customs. Always good to stretch out before a long drive.

Drift, in holoform, wrapped his arms around his chest and shivered. Ratchet wanted to make a jibe about how, maybe, if his holoform put on some damn clothes he wouldn't be cold all the time. But it really wasn't the right moment.

Ratchet transformed and rolled his way onto the loading platform. He popped the back open and then, with a moment of concentration summoned up _his_ holomatter avatar.

It took the both of them pushing to get the coffin loaded safely in Ratchet's back hatch. Ratchet did a quick opacity and solidity test before he closed the door, then they both scaled down to more plausibly human size.

Drift squeezed Nugget's hand reassuringly—at this scale Nugget was nearly as tall as Drift's waist. Ratchet repeated his instructions one more time—their cover story, their cover identities, the very important instruction to _leave all the talking to him_. Nugget might be right that neither he nor Drift was a good actor, but it was the pair of them in combination that was abysmal at it.

If the night before hadn't happened, Drift would have asked him one more time about why they needed cover identities. Ratchet would have gotten to remind him that they were damn easy to find on Autopedia—and the last thing they needed was the customs agent searching "Drift" and realizing the bot in the coffin couldn't be Nugget's parents’ long-lost mechanical child.

He didn't ask.

Ratchet used the remote control to lower the loading deck into the station below.

The customs agent who met them there was deeply unenthusiastic about the inspection. Apparently their wavey-detector wand wasn't smart enough to pick up on solid light holograms, which...was a thing Ratchet hadn't thought about until that exact moment. Slag, he was lucky this was a technological backwater.

They met Ratchet's explanation of repatriating "Nugget's" remains with little interest, and didn't even ask for further details to look him up. Apparently that story combined with Drift still holding the real Nugget's hand gave a convincing impression of mechanical-rights activists.

The coffin gave them pause and, sure enough, they asked to see inside. Ratchet helped them open the lid a little, just enough to see inside and scan the inside for heat signatures and the promised radiation. They didn't question the slightly too-big dimensions of the exterior compared to the interior.

With satisfyingly little fuss they were cleared for the shuttle ride to the planet below. Figuring out the docking fees for their ship took more time than the entire visitor entry process. Ratchet drove them onto the vehicle section of the shuttle and waited inside as Nugget and Drift wandered off to watch the planetary approach from the huge observation windows with the few other travelers. Nugget brought his little box of memorial lanterns with him.

Ratchet sat in the dark and thought himself in circles.

They came back before touchdown and climbed in the passenger side together, Nugget curling up in Drift's lap. Ratchet had seen them talking together as they approached, but once they were inside the air-sucking silence swallowed them too.

The drive was too short. Ratchet's course was too well planned, there wasn't any way to get lost and force them to start a conversation. The time when Nugget would be gone and Ratchet would have to face Drift without that buffering presence grew shorter and shorter and then vanished as he pulled into a spot at the end of a long drive of crushed rock. There was a little domed earthen house that was nearly swallowed by the swaying tall grasses of the field, shifting shades of blue and teal.

Drift and Nugget got out and Drift hesitated for a long moment with the door open. When Ratchet didn't make a move to get out of the driver's seat, Drift slammed the door closed. He took Nugget's hand and led him up to the doorway, box of lanterns safely in his other arm. They rang the bell.

Ratchet knew this because, a moment later, a ringing sound swept the field, the sound rippling visibly out as it swept through the grasses. The grasses settled back to stillness as Ratchet folded his arms across the steering wheel to lean forward and get a better view of the farmstead.

Drift and Nugget must have heard something because they turned to face the open field. A moment later a four legged alien covered in soft shaggy fur burst out of the grasses. They saw Nugget and rushed him, collapsing to their knees and nuzzling him with frantic joy. A second and third alien followed out of the grasses and paused long enough to let a gaggle of small Nugget look-alikes slither off their backs before crowding close.

When the cuddle pile finally broke apart, Nugget's parents led the whole group into the small house. The door closed and Ratchet settled in to wait. Drift wouldn't want to leave until he was sure that Nugget would be welcomed and happy here. Given that absolute outpouring of affection they'd just witnessed, Ratchet was pretty sure he would be.

Still, it could be awhile before Drift was ready to head back.

Ratchet pulled his legs up into the seat and pillowed his head against his knees. He knew he should have felt guilty for doing that to Drift and Nugget, for promising to play along with their game and yanking away the rug at the last minute. Instead he just felt sorry for himself. He wasn't an idiot—Drift's affections were as transparent as a clean windshield. And after Iredem, Ratchet knew he returned those feelings. He wanted.

But he could see that future spilled out ahead of them, Drift tied down to him and pouring himself out for Ratchet. Ratchet, who time had proven to be a poor friend and a worse lover, who’d had the emotional intelligence of a scraplet even before he’d soured with age. It was better for them both if Drift moved on.

He saw the house and its warmth and he locked himself outside. It was better for them both.

Someone knocked on the window.

Ratchet turned to glare at the window. Drift wiggled his fingers in a little wave. "Don't be like that, Ratchet," he said. "It's your last chance to say goodbye. And there's some people Nugget wants you to meet."

Ratchet sighed. Drift was right. The kid hadn't done anything and with Ratchet's luck he'd probably take Ratchet not coming in to say goodbye as proof Ratchet really was angry with him.

He swung his holomatter form out onto the gravel path. Drift reached out and then pulled his hand away, a sheepish smile on his face. The expression pulled across the scars on his face, the ones Ratchet somehow kept forgetting in the visual chaos of the holomatter's botanical tapestry. Even like this he was perfect.

Ratchet shoved his hands in his pockets and followed Drift up the gravel drive. Inside, he was introduced to the entire pack of tiny mechanicals by Nugget. He immediately forgot all of their names, which Nugget had somehow already memorized. _Youth_.

"And my name is Keddie!" Nugget announced, pointing at himself.

"It's a very good name," Ratchet agreed.

"Come on, you have to meet my proggies," Nug-Keddie said, tugging Ratchet along. Drift was left in the mob by the door.

In the next room the three aliens, Keddie's progenitors, were sitting around a low table. Keddie introduced each of them in turn—Pål, Petter and Bodil—and then bounded off again back to the other room.

Ratchet took a seat on the floor.

They thanked him and Drift for bringing Keddie home, which was predictable but no less awkward for it. "It was the only thing to do," he said solidly. "After we found Nugget—I mean, Keddie. After we found him we had to make sure he was safe."

Petter laughed. "Nugget! What a charming appellation. You and your friend are both charmingly named as well."

"We're not a particularly figurative sort," Ratchet said. "I'm a fan of getting straight to the point."

"In that case," Bodil said, looking over Ratchet's shoulder at the doorway beyond and the squeals of childish joy spilling in. "We have something we need to discuss."

They wanted to know, of course, what had happened to Keddie. Ratchet told them. He didn't mince words but he tried not to dwell on any of the more gruesome points. "He's going to need support," he said.

"He'll have it," Bodil promised. "Will you two be alright?"

"What about us?"

"Well, Keddie's not the only one who's been through a traumatic experience recently. If there's anything we can do..."

"The best thing for the both of us would be to be getting home," Ratchet said. "But thank you for the offer."

Ratchet was ready to head out, but it took awhile for the party to wind down. First Drift had to tire out Keddie and all his siblings, then there were three rounds of goodbyes to get through, each one more tearful and overwrought. Ratchet caught Drift shivering out on the porch and finally herded him to the car.

By the time they were back on the road the sky had deepened to dusky purple. They rode a little ways in silence before Drift asked. "Are we ever going to talk about it?"

"I'd rather not," Ratchet said. He reached over to the center console and turned on the radio. He was hoping for music, but there was an announcement going on instead.

_I repeat. Citizens are warned that there is a manhunt underway for two suspects, wanted in connection with the murder of one Elter Thiesk. Citizens are recommended to stay in their houses. We believe the suspects may be traveling in disguise in a large red and white vehicle, heading north in the Bergaen Province. I repeat, stay in your homes until—_

Ratchet turned the radio off and looked over at Drift. "Well, that's not good."

"What are you waiting for?" Drift asked, waving his arms at him. "Drive!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks in advance to everyone who comments & also to all of you for being so patient! Got some fun stuff planned for the next chapter, just as soon as I write my winter gift exchange piece & finish a teeeensy surprise cywhirlgate piece I've been working on.


	5. Kirtac-9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Hello again! It's been a...well, it's been awhile.
> 
> I decided early on that this chapter was going to be a Mad Max Fury Road homage and that I was going to write epic car chases and also that some of the most important emotional moments were going to happen in this chapter and:  
> 1\. I'm not actually good at writing action  
> 2\. It turns out car chases are difficult to translate to prose  
> 3\. Got slammed by writer's block for the months of January and February
> 
> That said, I'm really proud of this one :3  
> I hope you enjoy  
> I hope you didn't have to reread the earlier chapters to remember what was going on

Just looking at it, the shuttle depo was an easy target for skimming.

The fence only carried up to Drift's shoulder and ended with a rather pitiful coil of barbed wire. It would have been easy to jump, simple to cut though. But a glance at the ultraviolet range revealed a shimmering net that swelled skyward from beyond the base of the fence, promising that there was no way to make it through undetected.

He needed the fuel either way. Drift swallowed his apprehension and backed up to give himself a running start. He jumped, twisting so that his back passed inches above the top of the fence, not even rustling the loose wires on top. On his way down he fell through the EM field.

It was a shivery sensation, so faint it was hard to be sure he weren't imagining it. Drift hunkered down by one of the parked shuttles and waited for the sensation to clear. The panicky, alarmist part of his brain was waiting for sirens and search parties. It was easier to shut that part of him up after a few minutes waiting in the silence, his HUD fractaled as it scanned every remote broadcasting security camera in the shuttleport. No movement. No alarms. No search parties.

Drift was still dead.

Drift hauled himself to his feet and scoped out his first target, still thinking about the security net. _This_ was what happened when you were overly reliant on a single form of security tech. By all the sparks beyond, Drift had been blessed that Kirtac-9 had just happened to rely on heat sensing tech and energy signatures as the backbone of their security apparatus. Two sensors that didn't seem to read Drift now that Ratchet had him playing dead.

Drift settled beside one of the older shuttles and switched on his heatblade until he could melt the fuel hatch open. They had a physical lock over the fuel cap, but Drift wasn't scared by a ten pin lattice lock. It was time-consuming getting it open with his fingers stiff and cold though. One of the joints was making an unhappy squeaking noise and Drift could only imagine what Ratchet would say about that.

Finally he got it open and unspooled the coil of plastic tubing he'd stuffed in his pack. He dropped one end into the shuttle's fuel tank and sucked on the other end until the fuel was far enough out that it would continue to siphon when he held it into the canister.

While he was waiting, he scanned the depot for his next victim. Newer ships were liable to have security systems wired in. The real junkers were probably running on slop fuel—Drift didn't have time to check them each one at a time. He picked a respectable ship, well maintained but cheap. A Nexus Flyaway, workhorse of the galaxy. He'd seen the design sold under every manufacturer's name under the sun but it'd always be a Flyaway to him. He'd ran with a shuttle like that in between Crystal City and meeting the Wreckers.

Drift capped off his fuel canister and tucked an empty under his arm before heading to the Flyaway, keeping half an eye on the security camera footage on his HUD. There was one camera sweeping the shuttle depo; he hustled to keep ahead of it before he could duck off into the shadows.

He would reassure himself, later, that the reason he hadn't been watching the ground was that he was so busy looking for high tech dangers. Not for snare traps you’d use to trap a turbofox.

His ankle snagged on the loop and he found himself yanked upside down, wire dragged tight around his leg. He tugged on it, bracing his hands against the ground as he tried to get himself free; mainly succeeding in pulling it tighter.

A light in the Flyaway flipped on. Drift froze. A set of stairs popped down and a short figure with what looked like a pneumatic whaling hook balanced against their shoulder stepped down out of the light. They squinted at Drift, eyes glinting in the reflection of his biolights.

"Damn," they said. "What in downed orbitals are you doing here? Everybody's looking for you."

Drift ran a quick diagnostic on his audials. Everything seemed to be in working order. "Excuse me?" He said. "Could you repeat that?"

The figure snorted and held up the improvised weapon. "You aren't going to murder me, right? Cause this thing is heavy as hell."

"Why would I do that?"

"Well, the wanted posters seem to think that's a thing you do," they said, dropping the weapon with a thud. "It doesn't work anyway, I just keep it around to wave at kids who try to tag the ship. I gotta say, this trap was _not_ designed for someone in your weight-class." They put their hands on their hips and shrugged. "Anyway, what are you doing skulking around a shuttle depot in the dark? I figured you and your partner were long gone."

"How exactly were we supposed to do that?"

They snorted. "You're Cybertronians, right? Turn into space skippers and boost it."

"We can't turn into whatever we want."

"Really? Wow, that sucks," they said, dropping down onto the shuttle stairs. "So what’ve you been doing? The trail went cold and nobody had collected the bounty...if you didn't get dead and you didn't escape, were you just, what? Hanging out in shuttle depots?"

That better not have been a pun. "Why should I tell you anything?" Drift asked, crossing his arms.

"Dunno. Cause I'm the woman who's caught you and ain't going to turn you in? Seems only hospitable of you."

"And why _aren't_ you going to turn me in?"

"Well, they said you killed Elter Thiesk." She spat and the ground sparked and fizzled. "Wish I coulda seen it. See, that's a public service. His company sold the swarms that stripped the exclusion zone, you know. My mums used to have a farm down there by the river."

"Ah."

"So, yeah. What are you doing getting caught by my vandal deterrent system, Mr. Most-Wanted?"

Drift hauled himself up and grabbed the line so he could loosen the loop that had tightened around his leg. He wiggled free and dropped down to the ground below. His fuel canister had fallen when he'd been startled earlier. He held it up by way of explanation. "Looking for fuel," he said baldly.

"Oh. You drink shuttle fuel?"

Drift shrugged. "I can."

"Weird." She considered it. "Well, if you’re skimming, try the Leogan by the exit. Guy who pilots it is a real ass. But really, you've got to get out of here. You stick around long enough, someone's going to catch up with you."

"Tell me something I don't know."

Her eyes glinted in the darkness. "I know the next pick-up point for the trip Upstairs."

 

* * *

 

 

The moons were dipping down towards the horizon by the time Drift made his way back to the mag train. It was a scrapper, tall-sided cars loaded high with junk and metal. Drift counted his way from the front of the train and then ducked down under one of the cars. He crawled slowly, tapping at the floor above him until he found the place where it shifted under his hand. Drift pushed aside their makeshift escape hatch and pulled himself up into the train. He set his pack aside as he closed the hatch behind him.

It was as he'd left it—a open space on one end of the car hollowed out of the pile of scrap metal. Well, not quite as he'd left it. Ratchet had shifted out of ambulance mode and was curled up in the corner, his back to the coffin.

Drift walked over and knelt beside him. There wasn't much time and he’d need Ratchet's help to plan this. Still, he hesitated to wake him.

Ratchet liked to act like he was old; he wasn't really, on the scale of it. But he was _tired_. And not used to running empty like this. Drift's spark shivered with guilt again. If Ratchet hadn't come to find him...Drift would pay that friendship back. He would get Ratchet to safety.

He would never deserve someone as good as Ratchet.

"Shh," Ratchet grumbled. "You’re thinking too loud."

Drift could see him wake as his body remembered its pains and tried to flinch away from them. His face pinched and he stiffened his back as he sat up.

Drift tried for playful. "And how do you know that I'm thinking?"

"Because you're staring at me and your fans are working the way they always do when you're upset. Finally back, I see." Ratchet powered his optics and his face contorted in disgust. "What in the name of self-respect are you wearing? Please tell me that's not a disguise."

Drift plucked at the slightly-threadbare tarp he'd tied around his neck as a cape. "You don't like it?"

"Nothing says "subtle" like a oversized metal fugitive wearing a cape. Truly inconspicuous."

"I'll have you know that Wing in Crystal City used to use a cloak like this whenever he needed to sneak somewhere," Drift said.

"And did it make him less conspicuous?"

Drift grinned. "Not really."

"Please don't tell me it's intended as a fashion statement."

Drift tugged at the knot until it finally slipped free and dumped the tarp over Ratchet. "We're going to need it later and it didn’t fit in my pack."

"...and you thought it'd be funny to see my reaction." Ratchet guessed.

"Winding you up is always a good time," Drift said with a grin. He rummaged through his pack out for one of the fuel cans and offered it up to Ratchet. "Refuel. I'll tell you what I found."

"Bossy," Ratchet said. He popped the cap off and took a swig. His optics sparked and he threw his hand over his mouth to stop the fuel from coming back up. "Where did you get this?" he demanded, eyeing the fuel canister like it’d been laced with enriched nucleon.

"Pulled it out of a harvester unit on my way back," Drift lied. "It's got a nice rustic tang, doesn't it?"

"Drift!"

Drift held out his hand and, when Ratchet grudgingly passed the fuel back, took a sip. A bit thin and murky, not too bad. "I'm kidding. I siphoned it out of some shuttles. It's perfectly safe."

""Perfectly safe"," Ratchet said, back to form with the air quotes. "Who here is the doctor?"

"Who here has actually gotten themselves sick on fouled fuel? This stuff is fine, Ratch. I wouldn't have offered it to you without trying it myself."

"I guess I should be grateful it didn't come off the floor."

"One time. I did that _one time_." Drift passed the fuel canister back. "Just take it through your auxiliary if you can't handle the taste."

Ratchet nodded. "So, what's it look like out there?"

"The bad news is there's no way out via Hyladel Station."

"Told you," Ratchet said with an obnoxious finger point to punctuate the statement. He pushed open the cover on his auxiliary port and began to pour out of the fuel canister with careful concentration.

"No, you told me it was a stupid risk and that I was going to get myself caught. There's no way out via Hyladel. But I've got a lead on the next touchdown point for the trip Upstairs. If we can get there without being captured, they'll port us out."

"What do you mean "a lead"? What is "a lead"? Did you hear it on the radio? Did you have a mystic dream? Did someone predict your future?"

"I should have let you nap," Drift said. "I got in contact with a local who works as a distributor for the topside ship. They got me the location and an offer of passage."

"The people who run Upstairs are criminals, Drift. Smugglers. _Weapons smugglers._ What, are they going to give us passage for free?"

"No, _Ratchet_ , they’re giving us passage in exchange for you fixing up their mechanical crewmembers en-route. I sold them on you being the best."

"Oh great. Just what I wanted. To run a charity clinic for criminals."

Drift let out a hiss of frustration. "Ratchet! I am a criminal! We are _both_ fugitives. Get some perspective. We have checked every legitimate means of transit and there's _no other way off the planet_ that doesn't take us through a screening by the security patrols that are looking for us. So it's this or we hijack a shuttle and hell with the consequences." Drift worried at his lip. "It's risky, but every other way risks hurting innocent people."

Ratchet sighed. "I don't like it." He waved his hand for Drift to continue. "So where do we have to go?"

"You're not going to like that either," Drift said.

Ratchet put down the fuel canister with a clunk. "Seriously?"

"We can do it."

"I cannot _believe_ ," Ratchet said, dragging out the word like the DJD dragging out an execution, "that you want us to cross the Exclusion Zone. I'm right, aren't I? That's where you want us to go."

Drift smiled appeasingly. "...yeah?"

"We're going to die," Ratchet announced, throwing up his hands. "Just great. Just fragging wonderful."

"You done yet?"

"Give me another five minutes." Ratchet said. He stared sullenly at the floor for less than thirty seconds before he asked. "If these people really want us to come along, why do we have to travel through a deathtrap to get to them?"

"Apparently they only have enough juice for one more teleport pickup before they leave orbit. They can’t break contract with their suppliers who’re expecting a pickup on the other side of the Exclusion Zone."

"Great." Ratchet looked like he was planning on complaining more later, but he asked anyway: "So, what's the plan?"

"You're the one who did all the research about this planet," Drift said. "So I need you to check my work. We'll ford at the river—"

"The River Pokol?"

"The one that marks the boundary of the Exclusion Zone. There’s a thirty mile stretch where the drop to the river is steep enough that they don’t keep the field energized. We'll use the coffin to float across. The swarms won't be a threat to us; they only eat organic matter. But they’ll stop anyone from following us across the Exclusion Zone."

"Yeah, but that still leaves the...what are they called? _Find & Disable Abandoned Ordinance—_"

" _Find/Inactivate/Destroy Ordinance Robots._ FIDORs. They won't be able to sense me. If we keep you in the coffin, they won't be able to sense you either." _He hoped._

"How, _exactly_ can you be sure of that? That's your plan? Drag a coffin across a barely remediated minefield and _hope_ nothing notices you?"

Drift did his best to look confident. "It's the same manufacturer. The security systems at the stations, the scanners on the FIDORs; Thiesk's company had a monopoly here during the war. The station scanners can't see me, the FIDORs won't either." It was a solid theory, anyway.

"But you can't be sure," Ratchet said. Incapable of giving up on a point, especially one Drift didn’t want to talk about.

"I can’t be sure, but we have to do it anyway. There’s time time before the train starts moving and we're surrounded by raw parts; if you’re worried we can make some distractions to buy me time if I need to retreat."

Ratchet sighed. "Okay, so how do we get out of the Exclusion Zone? The forceshield on the other side isn't something we can just walk through."

"I kinda figured you could..." Drift wiggled his fingers, "hack it?"

Ratchet stared at him and then cradled his face in his hands. "Oh, "hack it", will I?"

There were other ways to cross the fence, Drift just didn't like them very much. "So you can't do it?"

"Well I can't do it if I'm eaten alive, can I? Your whole plan for crossing means that I have to hide in the coffin, which: (A) I don't think I'm going to fit, and (B) I do not like, but more importantly, (C) _there is no way I can "hack" the fence while I'm in a coffin!_ "

"Well of course not. That's why we're going to set off an EMP first. That'll disable any FIDORs that are nearby and buy you time to work."

It wasn’t a great plan. There was a lot riding on things they couldn't know, as Ratchet pointed out repeatedly. But this was their one break, and Ratchet knew it. When his complaints ran into reruns he sighed and waved Drift over. "Come on, I need to check you for joint damage."

"I was careful."

"I told you, the deep freeze isn't something you're supposed to move around in. The cold is making your joints brittle and its dulling your sensornet so you're less aware of the damage. Gotta check it over."

Drift protested a little, halfheartedly, then scooted back to sit against Ratchet's chest. He was warm. They needed Drift to stay cold—it was the only thing that'd let them stay undetected this long and it was what was going to get them off Kirtac-9. But Ratchet was _warm_. It took all of Drift's self-control not to curl into his arms like he was back on the streets of Rodion with Gasket, watching the stars.

Drift reminded himself, pointedly, that Ratchet _was_ like Gasket. Very much like Gasket. He couldn't give Drift what he wanted. It was his own damn fault for misinterpreting the intensity of Ratchet's devotion to his friends, the tenderness with which he rubbed his thumb over Drift's wrist as he tested its flexibility, for something more. That's always what Drift did. He went and wanted more than he could have. There was no way Ratchet hadn't noticed. Back on the shuttle Drift had been leaking desire like a stab wound leaks energon.

But still, Ratchet was warm. And when he forgot himself he was tender. Drift shuttered his optics and tried to force his face to keep its counsel.

Ratchet's hands stilled on his shoulder. "Am I hurting you?"

"What? No." Drift shook his head. "I'm fine."

"You look like you're in pain."

Drift half shrugged and cast out for an excuse that wouldn't be a complete lie. "Cold."

"Drift."

"Do you want me to read your aura and guess or do you want to tell me what you want me to say?" Drift asked.

Ratchet didn't take the bait. "You'd tell me if I was hurting you, right?"

Drift grimaced. "This helps, I promise."

"Then what?"

"It's nothing."

"Maybe you can lie to Rodimus like that," Ratchet scoffed. "You're an open book, Drift."

"It's nothing you can fix," Drift said. He changed the subject. "I'm hungry. Could you pass me the other fuel can?" Drift's fueling schedule had fallen to pieces during their flight across the countryside. But they'd need to refuel before they put the first phase of the plan in motion.

Ratchet reached over for it, putting his arm briefly around Drift's waist to steady him as he did so. Drift drank in small sips while Ratchet worked, testing flexion at each of his joints with his audial pressed close to listen for any abnormal noises. Eventually he eased out from behind Drift and scooted around front to check his leg joints.

When he was done he stayed there a moment, considering the tops of Drift's feet like they were a particularly tricky differential diagnostic. "By the way," he said, "it's not unknown _or_ untreatable. Post-starvation neural static. I know you haven't asked me, and I won't push, but I hate thinking of you suffering like that."

Drift pulled his legs in and set down the empty fuel canister. "Excuse me?"

"The thing where you're hungry all the time, whether or not you eat."

"I know what you're talking about. I don't know _how you know_ ," Drift said, before he realized the obvious answer.

"It was pretty clear in the recording, Drift."

"But you—" Drift restrained himself from saying something terribly petulant, like _"if you watched it why didn't you come sooner"_ or, worse yet, _"why would you watch it if you couldn't love me?"_ "You watched it?"

Ratchet had seen him sell his fuel for syk. He’d seen him fawning over Megatron. He’d felt the ghoulish pleasure he’d taken in killing Autobots. He’d knew how it’d felt to have someone pull his spinal conduit from his body. _He knew he’d tried to overdose the day they’d met—_

"Eventually. Took me awhile to find it. I'm not really a riddle guy, Drift, next time just tell me in plain—"

"You didn't tell me!" Drift pushed himself to his feet and looked around, realizing that the dark cave of scrap metal that was keeping them safe from detection also left him with nowhere to run. "I shared all that and you didn't say anything? You just let me..." He tilted his chin up and promised Primus that if he could just die of spontaneous spark failure right then he would be happy to serve as a sliver for the next seven eternities.

"Why wouldn't I? Slag, I assumed you knew I'd seen it and weren't sure how to bring it up." Ratchet stood up and paced away, arms crossed against his chest.

Drift gaped at him. What were you supposed to say to that?

Ratchet sighed and turned back, hands held up appeasingly. "Okay. I don't know where your idea for the gift and that whole—the whole "radical honesty" thing came from, but yeah. I should have thanked you for your trust. And I should have let you know I don't think less of you for any of it."

"That's nice," Drift said. He pushed his hands against his knees to try and stop them from shaking. That whole time they’d been stuck on Iredem Ratchet had never said _anything_. That whole time. Primus, Ratchet had sacrificed himself because, after what he’d seen, he didn’t think Drift could handle it. He felt sick.

"I feel like you’re upset with me."

"You would be correct." Drift said. _When Ratchet told Keddie they weren’t in love he had already seen how hopelessly Drift loved him. There was no way to pass that off as obliviousness. That was rejection._

"Are you waiting for me to apologize for not predicting that you’d think I hadn’t seen the message?"

Drift snorted. "I’m not waiting for anything. I’d just forgotten what an absolute blockhead you are sometimes." Just then, there was a low rumble that shook the bed of the car they were standing in. "That'll be the engines coming on. We should get to work."

"I still don’t understand why you’re this upset," Ratchet said.

Drift threw up his hands. "I gave you all the power when I gave that to you, Ratchet. And you can’t even be bothered to wonder why."

 

* * *

 

 

The tracks ran from Hyladel, the southernmost shuttleport, up to Lutreol, a recycling facility just north of where they'd originally touched down. The train never ran up beside the river Pokol but there was a point where the tracks curved to avoid some steep terrain and at that exact point, the drive was less than twenty minutes. Well, he was estimating twenty for Ratchet. Drift could have done it in ten.

Drift gathered up all of their supplies into his pack, which he slipped over his shoulder. He checked each of his swords and then looked over his shoulder at Ratchet.

Ratchet was in ambulance mode, but Drift didn't need to see his face to recognize the anxiety in his aura.

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather have me drive?" Drift offered.

Ratchet snorted. "I'm not letting you drive. I've _seen_ how you drive."

"Suit yourself," Drift said. "Go straight to the river. Don't stop; I'll catch you."

"Thought you were mad at me."

"I am. Doesn't change anything." Drift shrugged. "Given the odds we die in the next few hours, I don't want to end things on a bad note."

"You're not allowed to get gloomy, _I'm_ supposed to be the pessimist. And we're coming up on the curve," Ratchet said. Drift checked the nav feed they'd hacked into and watched the dot that represented the train narrow in on their drop point. He squeezed around Ratchet’s hood to double check that their modifications to the door were ready. He pressed his hand up against the corrugated metal and felt it rattle on the few rivets they’d left holding it to the frame. It’d be easy to blow through.

Stepping back, he swung himself over Ratchet’s hood. "Ready?" he asked as Ratchet popped the rear hatch open. He barely fit in the space above the coffin after Ratchet closed the hatch, only a narrow strip of light visible at the roofline.

"Stupidest damn thing I've ever done," Ratchet grumbled. The whole space rumbled lightly as he spoke.

"You came to get me," Drift joked.

Ratchet accelerated suddenly and Drift had to catch himself to stop from slamming against the back hatch. There was a horrible crunching sound of metal on metal as they broke through the wall. Then they were flying. Through the slit Drift could see the open field of grain, the sky lush and blue above them, the train growing smaller as they fell. He braced himself for the ground to hit back.

Darkness swallowed the slit window as the grain blocked out the sun. Drift lost his grip and hit the coffin, chin first. He swore.

"You okay back there?" Ratchet asked. Drift could hear the thrush of grain against Ratchet's sides, the crushed stalks letting some light in in their wake. They jounced around like a shuttle breaking up in atmosphere.

"I'm fine," he said. "What do you see?"

"I can't see anything," Ratchet said. "The fucking grass is too high. I'm going to cut a bit east, try to get to the nearest irrigation lane. We'll be faster there."

Drift itched to materialize in the passenger seat, to be able to see what was going on. But they’d decided that using his holomatter generator would boost his core temperature too much to risk. He waited, useless, in the back of the cab and scanned the sky.

"Gliders!" Drift yelled.

"What?" Ratchet said.

"We've got two incoming. Small manned aircraft, those gliders mechanics use to drop into remote farms."

"Damn, they must've been close by," Ratchet said. "I can see light up ahead. Should we still try to break into the irrigation lane? We’ll be easier to spot there."

"They're airborne, they can already see us," Drift said. "Go wherever’s fastest. Just drive, I'll handle it."

They crashed out onto the road and the light flooded in. Ratchet skidded as he aligned himself with the road, tires grinding against the gravel. Drift edged closer to the rear hatch, bracing one shoulder against the wall as he reached for the door latch. The gliders were getting closer, two red specks growing into recognizable figures. No sign of other pursuit, but it was Mortillus-damned luck that there'd been anyone in the area to begin with. Farms close to the River Pokol were all fully automated. It should have been a clean shot.

The first glider swooped into the lane behind them. Its wings skimmed the rows of grain on either side. There was something mounted to the front of the pilot’s harness, something that glinted in the caught sunlight.

The glider banked left to sweep up Ratchet's left flank.

Drift surged into action. Throwing himself sideways, he grabbed hold of Ratchet’s quarterpanel with one hand and snapped the weapon out of the air with the other. His feet skimmed against the gravel and he tried to pull them up onto the fender as he glanced at the weapon. A knife on a chain; probably intended to blow out one of Ratchet’s tires. That was a mistake. Drift wrapped the loop of the chain around his arm once, twice, and pulled.

The force ripped the pilot’s harness free from its gossamer wing, sending them pinwheeling to the ground up ahead. It nearly pulled Drift off Ratchet. He climbed up on top of the roof and tested the chain with a tug of his hands. Only steel.

He tore it in half, splitting one of the joined links. The half attached to the downed glider slithered away as Drift turned to face front.

Their other pursuer had banked wide around them and was now barrelling down the road towards them. "Drift!" Ratchet yelled.

"Keep going!" Drift ducked lower against the roof and he adjusted his grip on his newly acquired knife.

The wind ripped at him as Drift took three running steps across the roof. He jumped.

The glider tried to bank away but Drift got his knife through the wing. It tore wide and the ground loomed up through the gap. He let go before they hit the ground, which did little to lessen the impact. His body rolled into the field, grain crushed beneath him.

The sky above him looked wrong. Too many suns. He reminded himself he wasn’t on Cybertron and pulled himself to his feet.

Ratchet had come to a stop only a few yards away. The glider had rolled after impact, wing mangled. Drift flipped it over. The pilot was bloody but breathing.

"Drift, come on," Ratchet said.

He hesitated. He wasn't a doctor—and certainly not a doctor for organics. Would the pilot—and the other one, back along the road—survive if they didn't get medical assistance?

"Drift, come on!"

He knelt down and pushed the red emergency beacon over the pilot's chest.

"Drift!"

Drift hustled over and jumped up into the back again, swinging the door closed behind him. "Let's go," he said, thumping the inside of the cab for emphasis.

Ratchet took off with a rumble of tires on gravel; Drift pushed himself up against the window again, his optics glued on the horizon. "Is that seriously what you had planned when you said you'd "handle" it?" Ratchet grouched.

"I'm flattered that you think there was a plan involved," Drift said. He rolled his shoulder—felt wrong but he wasn't sure if it was sensornet rebound or if he'd gotten a bit of gravel wedged under the plating.

"They probably called it in when they saw us," Ratchet said. "There'll be more on the way."

"Safe assumption," Drift said. He scrabbled at his back for a moment and popped out the offending bit of gravel. He almost dropped it but Ratchet would have complained. He slipped it into one of his hip compartments instead.

"You hurt?" Ratchet asked.

"Nothing I can't handle."

"Given that I know how much you _can_ handle, forgive me if that's not terribly reassuring."

"I'm fine. Neither of them even nicked me. Little banged up from the fall but that's it."

"I’m an ambulance, there are medical hookups in the back—"

"Ratchet, you can't focus on driving if you're snooping on my medical readouts. Relax and trust me to know if I need help."

"I'm willing to trust you with just about everything but that, kid," Ratchet grumbled. "You don't have the self-preservation instincts of a scraplet."

"Shut up and drive," Drift said with a smile. He caught himself falling back into that old familiar rhythm and he knew he shouldn't let himself indulge but...clearly Ratchet had never thought much of it.

The view of the passing fields through the slit above the door were deceptively unvarying—it was difficult to convince himself that they were actually moving. He found himself growing increasingly anxious with the feeling that someone was _catching up_.

"You can relax, we’re almost there," Ratchet said.

"What?"

"We just passed a sign warning about the river up ahead. Means we’re getting close. You can calm down."

"I am calm."

"Naw. You might be still, but I'm not dumb enough to mistake that for calm. You're all coiled up like a spring and it's _very distracting._ "

"And I thought you couldn't sense auras—"

Ratchet swerved abruptly, throwing Drift against the door. Drift opened his mouth to complain when a huge machine rolled out of the field behind them onto the road. It rode high on three wheels, spaced to run between the rows of grain. Plumes of white steam billowed up around its rounded carapace. Ratchet swerved again they slid between the wheels of a similarly huge machine, nearly getting caught under the pinchers as they lowered down between the wheels.

"Do not get out and try to fight the giant farming equipment with a sword!" Ratchet ordered. "We're going to outrun them."

Nobody on this damn planet followed the rules. These farms near the river were supposed to be managed by _autonomous_ machinery. Either these harvesters had been here before—maybe to rob the state-owned fields—or the response to the glider’s emergency beacon was a lot faster than he’d imagined. "What are they even doing here?" Drift asked.

"Trying to run us down," Ratchet said grimly. "Hold on and don't distract me."

Ratchet veered off sideways, crashing into the field again and then swinging back out around another huge machine that must have nearly blindsided them. Drift wanted to open the door and get a view of what was going on ahead of them, but Ratchet didn't need that kind of distraction. He scooted lower so he was wedged more securely into the space beside the coffin and tipped his head back to pray.

They jostled to one side and then the other and Ratchet slammed on the brakes. They backed up with a squeal of tires and then jolted forwards again. Drift kept his optics powered off and his mouth clamped shut. There was nothing he could do to help Ratchet except trust him. So he trusted him.

"We're coming up on the river," Ratchet said. "I'm going to turn to run alongside and go in after you, alright?"

That wasn't the plan, but it'd have to do. Drift reached back behind him and grabbed his pack and knotted it across his chest. He crawled back over the coffin and pressed himself into the space between the wall and the coffin.

He knew, obviously, that Ratchet wasn't anywhere in the ambulance. Ratchet _was_ the surrounding space, all of it. But he couldn't help feeling closer to him when he was pressed up against the back of the driver's seat. Maybe it was the proximity of his spark.

"Hey, Ratch. Can you get the door for me when it's time?" Drift asked.

"I've got you," Ratchet said. Drift had to stop himself from shivering. _Focus, Drift._

"When?" Drift asked.

"Damnit," Ratchet slammed on the breaks again and turned sharply to the side. "Got another glider on our tail. Go Drift. Go now!"

The back door swung open. In a moment Drift could see the glider bearing down on them, the harvesters with their reaping blades lumbering after.

Ratchet turned away from the river and Drift pushed off, running himself and the coffin over the edge. The white scarp fell away as the river rushed up to meet him. He hit the surface and he lost his grip on the coffin. He sloshed downstream to catch it, frame stinging from the impact.

A glider strafed overhead and Drift followed it with his optics to a spot upstream, where two harvester units sat blocking the river. The current tugged Drift further downstream as he strained to catch sight of Ratchet somewhere up above.

Drift planted his feet in the riverbed and leaned into the current. _Come on, Ratchet. Come on._

A figure broke out from under one of the wheels at a sprint and dove off the edge. He hit the water and went under.

Drift sent out a radio ping and tried not to panic when Ratchet didn’t immediately return it. Water didn't pose the same threat to them that it would have to an organic or most mechanicals—they didn’t not need air to breathe and the Cybertronian body could be sealed tight to keep out contaminants. But that assumed that Ratchet wasn’t hurt.

The river wasn't that deep; barely chest high, but the force of its current was enough to stop him from pushing far upstream before Ratchet was washed down to him. He was floundering; too heavy to float and the current too fast to let him regain his footing.

Drift resisted the urge to lunge for Ratchet and pushed the coffin out in front of him to give Ratchet something to grab hold of instead. The impact tossed him off his feet but he kept one arm clutching the coffin and used the other one to grab Ratchet's wrist.

"Hold on!" He ordered.

Ratchet nodded, gasping. "Never doing that again," he gasped. "How do we get to shore?"

"It's not that deep, I can ford the river," Drift said. "After you get in."

"I hate this plan."

"I'm not injecting you with anything or dumping you in a bath of liquid nitrogen, you can handle lying in a box for awhile."

"I can handle it," Ratchet agreed. "I don't like it."

"Well you can whine and make us miss our window or you can get in," Drift said. "Time for constructive criticism was a few hours ago."

Getting Ratchet into the coffin while chest deep in the river was a process that involved a lot of sloshing water. Ratchet's first attempt nearly tipped the coffin. They were both soaked from helm to peds and the coffin had more than a little water in it by the time they were done.

"I'm going to rust," Ratchet complained.

"You'll live," Drift said, sliding the lid closed and snapping the latch closed. Ratchet had had to squeeze in on his side with his arms squeezed tight to his chest in order to fit. Drift remembered squeezing like that to hide during fritzes back when he was a newframe. His frame ached in sympathy but the memory brought him back to their argument earlier and the fact that Ratchet _knew_ about that now.

"Oh I see, you're still mad at me," Ratchet said, considerably muffled by the lid of the coffin and the noise of the water.

Drift considered pretending he couldn't hear him at all. "Seems like it," he said.

He'd used some cabling and a set of magnets they'd found in the scrap car to fashion a handle on the coffin lid. He used the improvised handle to drag the coffin towards the shore and tried to visualize his anger pouring off of him like the water pouring off his plating. There had been a time when everything had seemed so simple. When he thought he'd understood what Ratchet was thinking. When he thought he knew what Primus wanted. Overlord had ruined everything.

No. _Drift_ had ruined everything. Overlord had just been one mistake in a long line of mistakes that proved how deeply he didn't deserve the things he couldn't stop himself from wanting.

Stupid to think that Ratchet would read anything but friendship into Drift throwing himself into the conjunx ritus as embarrassingly as possible.

He stepped up onto the shore and dragged the coffin up after him, sorry to lose the assist from the water's buoyancy. The shore was strewn with gravel that graded up into soft silt and hardpack. The ground, as far as he could see, was bare of anything living. It would have been as flat as it was bare if not for the scars of explosions and excavations that marred the surface. A warzone not needed for war and put beyond any other use by its destruction.

A vision of what Cybertron could have been.

There was no sign of life anywhere, but Drift knew that if he’d given Percy or Brainstorm a handful of dirt from the Exclusion Zone they’d have been able to find the reason the reason no organic citizen would dare follow them into the waste. The settlements on Kirtac-9 had been too diffuse to bomb them into submission. Their enemies had chosen instead to destroy their crops, starting with the old lakebed valley. The ground was swarming with engineered microbes ready to strip any organic matter into a few basic compounds.

He set a slow pace, keeping his temperature stats central on his HUD. It was nearly midday and even with the tarp tied around his neck as a cape to cut the sunlight, he was running hotter than he wanted. The damn coffin was heavy. He shouldn’t have been surprised, given how many times Ratchet had repeated his skeptical queries into Drift's ability to drag him all the way to safety. Drift could do it, but balancing the need to hurry against the need to keep his temperature down was an unwinnable calculus.

Ratchet had gone quiet once they hit the shore. Drift followed suit. If Ratchet wanted to be sulk about the plan or Drift being "unfair" by being annoyed, that was fine. He didn’t have anything he wanted to say anyway.

Drift hadn't made it more than half an hour into their trek before he saw his first FIDOR. There was a downed aircraft, or the remains of one, lying skeletal half-buried in the dirt. The FIDOR was crouched beside the wreckage, metal frame ungainly with its huge solar panel packs stacked atop its back. The automaton had a long neck and a horrible maw of buzzsaw teeth, which it was currently using to happily shred bits of airplane.

Drift froze. The FIDOR didn't respond, didn't seem to have sensed Drift.

Drift sent up a prayer and started forwards again. If worst came to worst he had his swords.

After a few steps the FIDOR swiveled its head to follow him and stood up. It ambled over, a low whirring noise rolling through its chest. Drift kept walking; the FIDOR kept pace, head wobbling back and forth as if considering what Drift could possibly be.

As long as it didn’t think he was a bomb. Or a machine. FIDORs had been a goodwill gesture from Thiesk laboratories, an attempt to remediate a land riddled with their weapons. It hadn't worked. Or, rather, the FIDORs happily destroyed buried mines and unexploded bombs. They also destroyed any other piece of machinery that the Kirtac attempted to send into the Exclusion Zone. Even if the land was remediated, there would be no way for anyone on Kirtac-9 to know. Drift assumed that in a few years the Thiesk company would have offered to sell a few larger, meaner, robots to dismantle the FIDORs. Nobody seemed to have much of a clue what to do with the bioweapons.

Drift realized that he was hearing the engine noise in stereo just as the sound in his left audial sailed up in pitch. A drone swooped down, dropping out of the sky like a hawk. Drift threw himself to the ground and rolled out of the way. Dust sprayed over him as the drone whipped around to take another run at him.

It didn't make it far.

The FIDOR tackled the drone, ripping off one of the wings and shaking the smoking wreckage like a cyberlynx trying to break the neck of its captured prey. Drift scooted back out of the way, spark in his throat. He was pretty sure that wasn’t a manned aircraft but there was no way he could get in there to help either way. He picked himself up off the ground, grabbed hold of the coffin's handle and ran.

He got a glimpse of the FIDOR shredding the drone, soaked black by the spray of engine oil. He didn't look back again.

The FIDOR didn't catch up with him. Nothing bowled him over from behind and there weren't any hot teeth tearing at his spinal conduit. He forced himself to slow to a stop. He curled up beside the coffin and forced his vents open wider, trying to disperse some of that built up heat. _If Turmoil could see him now..._ Drift pressed the heel of his palm against his helm and tried to scrounge up a little self-respect. He wasn't some weakling Autobot, afraid of dying alone under the teeth of some ravenous creature on an alien planet.

There was a knock on the coffin beside Drift's head. and he startled again. _Right. Ratchet._ He was probably confused as all hell in there.

Drift waited for Ratchet to ask a question, but no question came. Apparently he was still getting the silent treatment. Nonetheless, he knocked back twice on the side of the coffin. _All good._

Then he pulled himself back together and kept on.

There weren't any more pursuers. There wasn't much chance of pursuit this far in; the forceshield that was in place to prevent the FIDORs from escaping had a damnable effect on navigation systems. Drift was impressed the drone had made it as far as it had. Drift picked a careful route amidst the hills and trenches and scattered wreckage, working from a compass bearing and remembered map.

It was nearing mid-morning when Drift heard a noise that stuck out against the constant noise of the wind, the grind of the coffin against the dirt and his own footfalls. It was a low whining sound, and it took him a moment to pinpoint where it was coming from.

Drift gently sat the coffin down and, after a reassuring double knock, walked over to get a better look at the stalled FIDOR.

This one must have been trying to do its actual job, digging up abandoned bombs. The thing had been thrown clear, apparently still functional except for the damage to its solar array. Drift paced around it, tracing the tracks in the dirt to see how far it'd dragged itself along before it ran out of charge. Two solar cells were cracked beyond use, with the remaining two covered in charry ash. He circled around again and crouched, safely out of range of its long neck. It whined.

Drift sat back on his heels, stumped. The first FIDOR hadn't read Drift as prey, so it stood to reason that this one wouldn't either. But what was the use in saving it so it could—what—destroy more things, possibly hurt someone in the future? Drift considered what wisdom the various advice-givers in his life might have had. Spindle would have saved it and so would Gasket, if for no other reason than it was hurting and they could. Megatron...Drift wasn't sure. Wing would have saved it even if the damned thing was lunging for his neck. And Ratchet...

Drift held out his hand for the FIDOR to sniff and it nuzzled its head against it. Ratchet had saved him, hadn't he? He hadn't been much better than this mechanimal; lost and destructive and looking out only for himself.

Drift smiled. It made sense that so many of his mentors were out to save lost causes. He untied the tarp and drew it off his shoulders, feeling the sun sink instantly into his plating. Ignoring that, he bunched up some of the tarp in his fist and began to wipe clean the FIDOR's solar panels. It jerked its head up to watch what he was doing when Drift first made contact then let its head fall back to the ground, rumbling softly.

Finishing as quickly as he could, Drift shook out the tarp and pulled it back over his head and shoulders. The shade cut the heat like a knife. Drift watched for a moment, then saw a pair of green indicator lights come on, positioned like eyes on the FIDOR's face. It had probably been intended as a reassuring design element that missed its mark.

No need to tempt fate. Checking his heading, Drift grabbed the coffin and started off again. He'd have to break soon; the temperature had been climbing all morning. He was hoping to stumble across some sort of trench or other source of shade for him and Ratchet before he had to stop.

Something hit him from behind at the knees. Drift twisted as he fell to land on his side, pulling his legs up and clamping his hands over the back of his neck as he recognized the sight of teeth and glinting green.

The FIDOR yipped and hopped off of him, circling around in apparent confusion. It sat down and then, after a moment's pause, flopped onto its side. _Mirroring him._ Drift forced his ventilations to steady and offered his hand again. The FIDOR pushed the flat of its head into his hand, rumbling gently.

What a strange thing to have programmed a bomb disposal bot to do. Drift rolled back onto his knees and gave the FIDOR a firm pat. It followed him back to his feet, weaving around his legs as he went to Ratchet's coffin and gave him the all clear. Drift picked up the handle and gave the FIDOR a sidelong look. It sat down next to him and looked up with what Drift couldn't help reading as transparent affection.

With a shrug, he set off again. The FIDOR didn't show any sign of wanting to leave. It would pace at his side contentedly for a few minutes, then dart off to follow some sensor reading. When Drift didn't follow, the FIDOR would paw at the ground and scurry back to his side, making a few half-hearted attempts to lead Drift back towards its treasure. Eventually it would seem to lose interest and resume its contented lope by his side, starting the cycle again.

The sun was nearing its peak when Drift finally found a suitable resting spot. An old blast crater, shallow on one side but cut deep into the bedrock on the other. Drift shoved the coffin into the back and then went back out to find some rocks to weigh down the edges of his tarp so that he could fashion it into a sunshade over the top. He sprawled out in the shade on top of the coffin. After a moment he wiggled out of his pack so that he could lay down more comfortably.

He had about thirty seconds to enjoy that before a great four legged beast attempted to squish the life out of him. He’d expected the FIDOR to follow him into the shelter. He hadn't expected it to climb on top of Drift like a piece of furniture and lay down with its head pillowed on his chest

Drift pointed at the sunlight, only a few yards away from him where the shade of the tarp ended. The stupid thing couldn't be fully recharged yet, it oughtn't be sitting in the shade like that. It ignored him. It was heavy.

Drift rolled the FIDOR off of him and into the dirt. It glared at him and _Primus protect idiots, he should not have done that._ It trotted over to him and sat down on the ground with its chin resting on top of his chest. Drift relaxed again.

He pointed at the sunlight. It ignored him. Drift was tempted to say something but—well. For one thing, there was no reason for it to understand speech. For another it’d be damned embarrassing if Ratchet heard what a mess he'd gotten himself into. Adopted by a semi-sentient robot-shredding machine. Primus, Ratchet would have a laugh over that.

Drift realized with a pang that there was no way the FIDOR was going to survive his and Ratchet’s escape attempt. He couldn’t scare it off without risking it turning on him. And for their escape plan to work he needed to set off that EMP to keep Ratchet safe.

Ratchet had to come first.

He forced himself to meditate, sinking below the surface scum of his anxieties to survey the murk that lay beneath the waves. His anger at Ratchet had faded. His grasping neediness had changed not one whit, but the initial heat of embarrassment of everything Ratchet knew about him had dulled. He had offered those secrets without conditions. If Ratchet did not return his affections or his spark-bared intimacy...there was still nobody else in the universe Drift would want to know all of that.

He got up and checked the temperature again, thinking uneasily of the limited time they had left to reach their destination. At least once they left the wastes it would be a smooth ride to the trip Upstairs. The exact location of the pick-up teleport was always a secret until the ship transmitted the beacon. There would be no reason for anyone to guess where they were going through the Exclusion Zone.

The FIDOR had followed him to the edge of the tarp's shade and Drift, resigned, sat down and patted the bit of sunlight beside him. _Come on, you._ Seemingly pleased with this arrangement, it trotted over to his side and sprawled out in the sunlight, wiggling closer until it could rest its chin on his leg. Absently, Drift stroked the plating of its head and tried to put aside his bigger problems in favor of smaller ones, more immediate, ones.

The EMP. Their whole plan hinged on Ratchet being able to get the fence open and to do that he was going to need to be outside the coffin. A crude EMP had seemed the simplest way to stop any FIDORs from being able to attack Ratchet. But that meant his FIDOR was also going to be in that blast radius.

When the sunlight on his fingers no longer felt scorching, they got back on their way. It was still slow going, pausing every few minutes to let his frame cool off. During one of these breaks, Drift considered the FIDOR sitting pressed up against his leg and decided to try something.

They'd made "lures" for the FIDORs, for Drift to use to buy time if his theory had been wrong. Just little bits of energized machinery they'd crafted out of scrap while waiting for the train to get to their drop off point. Drift hadn't tested them yet—he’d left them with the power safely switched off, tucked into his satchel.

He reached inside and carefully drew out one of the lures. His FIDOR snapped to attention. Drift held up his empty fist in the same symbol he would use to tell a soldier to hold and stepped away from the FIDOR. It trotted along after him, still tracking his other hand and the lure he was holding in it. Drift frowned and dropped the sign.

The FIDOR sat down in front of him. Drift was impressed it hadn't lunged for the bauble yet. He put up his fist again and waited for a count of five. This time the FIDOR stayed, watching him in puzzlement. Drift dropped the command and tossed the FIDOR the lure. It pounced, shredding the lure with vigor. When it was done, it sat back on its haunches and watched Drift, waiting.

Drift repeated this experiment over the next few stops. Staying put was easy, breaking the habit of following Drift seemed impossible. But eventually the FIDOR twigged to what he was trying to do. Drift wasn't sure how much time he had left, but he couldn't help the little spark of joy that bubbled up in him when he first managed to walk out of sight and back again with his FIDOR still waiting for him. _It could learn._

Based on the math he’d done before the drop, it couldn't be much longer. Drift took fewer breaks as the air grew colder, but he kept working with his FIDOR as much as he could.

He was walking back from practicing when something detonated underfoot, sending him flying. He hit the the ground and rolled, covering his head just in time to shield himself from the rain of rocks and dirt that had been thrown airborne by the explosion. The sound rattled around in his head and he wasn't sure at first if it was over.

Teeth clamped around his upper arm and pulled, dragging him out from under the rubble and into the sunlight. His FIDOR released him and began nosing around, prodding gently at his legs as if to get him up.

Drift did a brief systems check before pushing himself to sit. Not much worse than the fall he'd taken off the glider. He was lucky he hadn't blown a leg off.

His FIDOR growled. Drift jerked his legs away and caught sight of the cut down his leg, oozing energon. The FIDOR tracked him with its jaw, body language tensing up like a compressed spring as Drift tried to shuffle backwards, one hand clapped over his leg. It wasn't deep—the energon conduits would cauterize and reroute soon. That wouldn’t help him now.

Drift put his free hand on the handle of his sword. He didn't want to, but...he pushed himself to his feet and regarded the FIDOR. The illusion had been broken. He wasn't a friend, it had just miscategorized him.

But it hadn't lunged yet.

Sending up a prayer, Drift uncovered the wound and lifted his fist. _Stay_. Drift could see the recognition as it saw the symbol. It wavered. He kept his other hand on the hilt of his sword and hoped.

The growling stopped and the FIDOR sat back on its haunches. Drift brought down the sign and hesitated. Ratchet would say that he projected too damn much but he needed to believe that this robot could change. He offered it his hand.

The FIDOR sniffed at the fuel on his hand and then ducked around it to throw its forelegs onto his chest, knocking him back on his back. It nuzzled at him, squirming around like a fish out of water and Drift choked on a laugh.

"Drift!" Ratchet yelled. "What the hell is going on out there? If you don't say something _right now_ I'm getting out of here and damn the consequences."

Drift wiggled out from under the FIDOR. "I'm fine, Ratch," he said. "Sorry. I'm fine." He staggered over to the coffin and collapsed beside it. "Stepped on a landmine, but it must have been buried deep. Threw me a bit but no harm done."

"Well, tell me that right away next time," Ratchet said stoutly.

"Yeah, of course. Took me a minute to get my bearings," Drift said.

"Are we done with the silent treatment then?" Ratchet asked.

"What?" Drift climbed back to his feet and took up the coffin. " _You_ weren't talking to _me_."

"...we're both idiots," Ratchet said after a moment. "I thought _you_ weren't talking to _me_ because you were mad about the gift."

"Oh. I wouldn't do that. I thought you weren't talking to me because you were mad about the plan."

"Why would I be mad at you about the plan? It's a bad plan but it's better than no plan at all."

"You have _repeatedly_ said how much you hated this plan," Drift pointed out. "I inferred."

Ratchet sighed. "Are we almost to the fence yet? I'm afraid if I stay in this box much longer my joints will get stuck this way permanently. That's a joke, by the way—since clearly my delivery is subpar."

"Soon," Drift said. "As long as I don't step on any more landmines."

 

* * *

 

 

"Are you done yet?" Ratchet asked.

Drift side-eyed the coffin from where he was laying on the floor of the trench. It had been a devil to get upright with Ratchet still inside. Ratchet was damned lucky Drift hadn't tipped it upside down out of spite— _are you done yet_ , for pity's sake. Somehow in the process of making this entire plan he'd managed to forget how Primus-damned heavy Ratchet was. He felt like a energon jelly that had melted in the sun.

"I still have to set up the EMP," Drift said. "I'll be back in a few minutes."

"Be careful, okay?"

"I'll be right back," Drift said. His FIDOR tried to jump at him again as Drift got to his feet. Drift gave it a stern look which, of course, did nothing to discourage it from prancing about like a fool. _Moment of truth._

Drift settled their jury-rigged EMP on its little stand out beyond the walls of the trench, where the dirt would do most of the work in shielding them. Then, with a wave of his hand, he led the FIDOR on a stroll beyond the next hill. It trotted along beside him, until Drift found what he'd been looking for—a little cavern dug out by a bomb blast. He jumped down inside and waved the FIDOR in after him. It followed, sniffing around the edges of the crater curiously.

"Hey, here," Drift said, offering one his last lures. The FIDOR snapped it up and spent a moment happily shredding it, before pausing in confusion.

"Consider it an advance payment," Drift said, patting it on the head. "Because I won't be around to give you your treat afterwards. Now, I need you to be good, okay? Be good."

He put up his hand to _hold_ and waited until the FIDOR settled down to sit. Drift backed away slowly, keeping his optics fixed on the FIDOR until it was out of sight. Then he ran back to where he'd left the bomb. Clumsily, he fumbled through the trigger sequence and squirmed back into the cave, past the coffin into the narrow space at the back of the trench. He unlatched the coffin lid and jammed it sideways to block the entrance.

Water splashed out over his feet as the small alcove plunged into darkness. The dim glow of Ratchet's optics and biolights came into view as as he staggered out of the coffin, throwing his arm around Drift's shoulders for balance. He was damp.

"You are trying to kill me," he muttered into Drift's neck.

"Oh, slag, are you claustrophobic?" Drift asked. He hadn't thought to ask that earlier—he'd just assumed that—

"No, you idiot, I was worried about you." Ratchet said.

"Oh."

"We won’t have much of a window," Ratchet said, straightening up. "Let's get you undead so you can drive."

Drift let him fuss, looking away for the part where he injected the antagonist for the internal coolant. When that was done, Ratchet said the only thing left to do was wait until Drift warmed up enough to safely use his T-cog.

"There's something I need to tell you," Ratchet said, pulling his arms awkwardly across his chest and backing away until he bumped into the coffin. "I made up my mind while we weren’t talking and I just—I lied. With you and the kid, back on the shuttle. I was lying."

"You're going to have to be more specific than that," Drift said with a—okay, maybe slightly frantic—laugh.

"I love you."

"What the fuck." Drift pushed his palm against his chest where his spark suddenly felt like it was trying to shear off into the Dead Universe. _"What the fuck."_

"I shouldn't have lied and I'm sorry," Ratchet said. "I just didn't want to have to do this next part, where I explain that I can't be with you."

"Stop talking Ratch," Drift said, using the wall to guide him as he sank down and pillowed his head on his knees.

"Drift?"

"Shut up!" Drift snapped, trying to force down the pain in his spark and the wrongness in his brain and failing. He felt like every emotion he'd ever tried to meditate away had rushed him and pulled him under the waves and there was no way to figure out which way was up.

The light of Ratchet's headlights wobbled and blurred in the center of his vision and Drift snarled in frustration. _His stupid brain. Always fragging up his attempts to be less pathetic._

Fumbling, he reached into the little slot at his ankle where he kept an injector, nestled up beside his throwing knife. His hands were shaking.

"Ratch, I'm going to need you to inject me," Drift said, with as much dignity as he could manage.

"What?" Ratchet shouted. Or maybe Drift’s head was just going wonky again.

Drift held up the injector. "I’m about to fritz, Ratchet, I need you to inject me _now_ , before I get us both killed." If there was a worse time in this plan to stuck as dead weight, Drift couldn't think of it.

"Slag." Ratchet took the injector and kneeled, smoothing his hand over Drift's inner arm before finding a point to inject.

The mood suppressant wouldn't be acting at full strength for another thirty seconds, so maybe it was the placebo effect that immediately doused his rising panic. "Thanks," he said hiding his head under his arms again.

"Okay, so when will we know if it works?" Ratchet asked. Drift could feel his hands hovering inches away from his shoulder, like Ratchet couldn’t decide if he was allowed to touch. "I mean, I’m pretty sure it’ll work. I was about 98% sure this would work but—"

"Ratchet. This isn’t the first time I’ve used them," Drift cut him off. "It’ll take a few seconds to kick in but it works."

"Okay. That’s good. I mean..." Ratchet tapered off. "Obviously this is bad, but it’s good that the treatment works. And slag, I didn’t mean for it to go like this. I thought you were mad at me because you _knew_ I was lying back on the shuttle. I thought if I came clean that would make things better."

"How would I know that?" Drift said. "Just tell me. Tell me why you lied."

Ratchet sat silently. When Drift snuck a peek he saw Ratchet sitting there, mouth moving but no words coming out as he tried to figure out what to say. "I knew that if you knew I loved you back you'd never accept that I can’t be with you."

Drift frowned. "I can accept if you don't like me, Ratch. I can accept if you can't be with me. I don't understand _why_." He could feel his frustration slipping out of reach as ridiculous possibilities bubbled out of his mouth. "Are you sparkbound? Do you have a secret lover? Did you swear a vow of emotional chastity?"

Ratchet snorted. "Don't be absurd. It's none of that."

"Then why? If you love me, why wouldn’t you want to be with me?" Drift reached out for Ratchet’s hand, but Ratchet pulled away from him.

Ratchet thought for a few more minutes and then said at last, "I don't want to hurt you."

Drift laughed. "You don't."

"I do! Kid, you _showed_ me how much I hurt you. I've tried to tear you down for every trauma you endured and for all the things you couldn't help. And you just let me do it." Ratchet stood up and looked around, as if hunting for an escape. There was nowhere to go.

Drift stood up, using a hand on the wall to held steady him. "Ratchet, I’m not a kid. Used to be I couldn't get you to stop seeing me as Deadlock—what do you need to start respecting me like him again? All those things you said? I _knew_ you didn't know slag about me. I forgave you when I decided to give you the memory recording."

"See? You always forgive me. You never get angry! And if we were together it would just be this, forever: me hurting you and you letting me do it."

Drift put his hands on Ratchet's shoulders and hung on. He felt like he was floating, almost like he might float away if he didn’t anchor himself somehow. "I'm swimming in mood suppressants right now. I couldn't be angry if I tried. I am, _however_ , capable of looking at this situation objectively and letting you know that in a few hours when this wears off? I'm going to be mad as hell."

"When have you ever been angry with me?" Ratchet asked. He looked despondent, like the thought of Drift never being mad was hurting him somehow. Drift rushed to reassure him.

"I was angry with you all day. Today, remember? Not everyone throws things and yells when they're angry. Some of us work really carefully to control our emotions so we don't terrify our friends and remind people of things _we'd all rather not think about._."

"I don't want to talk about this." Ratchet lifted Drift’s hands from his shoulders and let them drop.

"You never want to talk about anything, Ratchet," Drift said. "That's the problem."

"Yeah, well, you said you'd accept my decision, right? This is me, telling you my decision. I don't want to be with you and I'm sorry that hurts you and I'm sorry it hurts me but this is the _better option_ , I swear. Now let's drop it. Are you certain you set the timer on this thing? It's been forever."

Drift floated on that cloud of good feelings and considered for a moment how much this was going to hurt once it wore off. In another state, he might not have been fool enough to say the thing he said next, but right then he had nothing holding him back. "Ratchet, I love you but you are incredibly short-sighted. I’m not going to stop loving you because we’re not together. I offered you my conjunx ritus."

The words left his mouth and it felt like a bubble had been popped, like there was a sound echoing in the small space but the sound was made of silence. He watched Ratchet's face contort as he struggled to figure out what Drift was talking about. It took a moment for Drift to realize he was noticing a _physical_ sensation—and another moment to realize that the physical sensation was the dampened shockwave of their EMP.

"Let's go, that was it," Drift said.

"Wait, what?" Ratchet said. "When?"

"Just now. That was the EMP going off."

"No, I mean when the hell are you talking about with the conjunx ritus?" Ratchet asked.

"Intimacy, disclosure, profferance. All in one go when I gave you my past." Drift said airily. "Come on, EMP went off, let’s go." He pushed past Ratchet, shoving the lid of the coffin over as he staggered out into the sunlight. The sunlight was warm; he’d forgotten what it felt like to be warm.

"That’s not how it works!" Ratchet complained, muffled from back in the cave. "You can’t just start the conjunx ritus without telling someone! I don’t _do_ subtle Drift, you can’t expect me to read into subtext like that."

Drift let himself spin in a little circle and then remembered that he should be scouting for danger. Scouting to make sure it was all safe for Ratchet.

There were two FIDORs beside the EMP, lying there crumbled beside it. The detonation timer had been a lot longer than Drift had expected, but neither he nor Ratchet could claim to be expert weapons engineers.

"We're clear!" He yelled for Ratchet. "It's safe up here!"

Ratchet staggered up him and Drift hurried back to lend him a hand; Ratchet clearly hadn't been lying about being a bit stiff. Ratchet took a moment to survey the landscape, shielding his optics against the waning sunlight. "Bit of a dump, isn't it?" he said. He kicked at a bit of rubble before taking off towards the fence.

Well, fence wasn't the right word for it. It was really a forceshield; shimmering pink in the sunlight and stretching up higher than Drift could track. Its job was to stop anything from escaping—whether that be biological contaminants or unruly robots. There was a similar fence across most of the opposite border, but for the places where the drop to the river was steep enough to prevent any FIDORs from fording across. Those sections relied on a lower powered forceshield that only targeted small particulates.

Ratchet limped right up to one of the structural columns of the forceshield and waved a hand over at Drift. "Knife please," he said.

Drift knelt to slip the throwing knife out of his boot. "What for?" He asked, flipping it in the air and catching it by the flat of the blade so that he could offer it to Ratchet handle-side first.

"Always some idiot painting the access panels shut," Ratchet explained, using the tip of the blade like a chisel. Once he'd gotten the door open Ratchet passed the knife back and, with a wiggle of his fingers freed his integrated microcircuitry kit. "It'll take me a minute to figure out how to change the frequencies. And I want you to know that we are coming back to this whole "conjunx ritus" business sometime when you aren’t on mood suppressants."

"If you say so," Drift said, watching Ratchet work. They couldn’t turn off the forceshield and risk instigating a planet-wide extinction event. So Ratchet had to mess with the controls so that this section of forceshield temporarily acted like the section they’d come in through.

Drift took up guard a few steps behind him and let his hands rest on the hilts of his swords. He wondered how soon he was going to run out of this false calm. He wouldn't have chosen to use it if hadn't been necessary, but he wasn’t sure how he could have gotten through that trainwreck of a conversation without it.

Something moved on the horizon and Drift turned to face it. A FIDOR, coming towards them at a lope. Drift narrowed his optics and tried to focus in enough to see whether any of its solar panels were cracked, but the angle hid them from view. No way to know—he drew his sword.

The FIDOR bore down on him, growling deep enough to rattle his plating. Ratchet looked over his shoulder, optics widening. "What the f—"

"Keep working! I'll handle it!" Drift ran forward and dropped into a slide as the FIDOR lunged, driving up his sword to slice through the thin plating of its underbelly. It shrieked as it landed behind him with a thump. Drift swung himself back onto his feet and ran back to get himself between Ratchet and the downed robot.

"Drift!" Ratchet yelled. His optics widened almost comically and Drift paused for a moment in confusion. A set of paws hit him between the shoulders and forced him to the ground. Drift nearly cut himself on his own sword on the way down. He scrambled back to his feet and found the FIDOR had multiplied into three, a semicircle of razor fangs and green eyes.

"Got a plan?" Ratchet asked lightly.

Drift drew his second sword and tapped the flats of the blades together. "I'll hold them off. When you get the wall open, go through."

"Any less stupid ideas?" Ratchet asked.

"Nope." Drift said, surveying the pack. Only three, but Ratchet must have noticed what he had. His reaction time was way off—either a side effect of the drug or a side effect of Drift relying on the emotions it was blocking to guide his responses in a fight.

One of the FIDORs stepped forward and snarled. Ratchet caught him around the waist when Drift tried to step towards it.

"Don't. I'm ready to send us through," he said.

"They'll follow us," Drift said.

"It'll only be open for a few seconds," Ratchet said. "If we stay more will come. Maybe you can take three, but what about ten? We can outrun them."

Drift didn't know how to make the call. He knew that he relied upon a lot of bad feelings—worry, ingrained trauma, wariness—to guide his decisions in moments like this. Right then all he could feel was that singing voice that told him that he trusted Ratchet and he needed to keep him safe. So he gave in to the slide. "Okay. Let's go."

The vibration he'd been picking up from the forceshield changed suddenly, like a note dropping in pitch. Drift knew even before Ratchet pulled him backward that it was their cue to go. The air shivered around them as they stepped through; the Exclusion Zone tinted pink from the other side of the forceshield.

Drift spun his swords into their hilts as he sprung into his transformation. Ahead the ground was flat and smooth, mineral deposits from a drained lakebed. There were no fields, no people, nothing between them and their destination. His wheels hit the ground and the wind whipped up as he gained speed. He could feel the heat of Ratchet’s frame at his side.

The FIDOR's roared behind them. Four of them; three uncomfortably close and one in pursuit of the pack. They weren't gaining yet, but Drift reckoned they would be. He remembered the FIDOR catching the drone out of the air, the way it had reduced the machine to pieces. He ached to put on speed.

"I can't go faster," Ratchet confessed, like Drift didn't know that. "You should."

"Ratchet I love you," Drift said. "I’m not going to leave you."

"This isn't the moment for romantic gestures Drift!" Ratchet said.

"Ratchet _that was a romantic gesture_. What you just said. "Let me die so you can live?" That's a romantic gesture if I've ever heard one," Drift said with a—well, okay, it might have been more like a purr than a laugh. He was still floating, aware of how angry he should be feeling, how frightened this all should make him. All he could feel was the joy and the excitement and the pulsing love, love, love.

Ratchet spluttered something and Drift had an idea. "You're half right—keep close and stay in my slipstream!" He accelerated, raising his spoiler in the back. With his wider profile, Ratchet wouldn't be able to get the same benefit from drafting behind him that another speedster frame would, but Drift was sure it'd help. He slotted into place in front of Ratchet and slowly accelerated, feeling out the distance between them as the reduced drag let Ratchet accelerate without increasing power.

He'd always wanted racing to feel like this. The world narrowed down to the path ahead, the ground beneath him, and Ratchet behind. The roar of the wind was so loud that everything was drowned out. And sure, he was aware of the FIDORs following behind them, but he was aware that they weren't getting any closer and right now that felt like winning.

Ratchet was the one who shook him out of it. »Drift, we've got incoming.«

»Where?« Drift asked.

»Coming down the valley from the East. It's two harvesters and four support skippers. They're up ahead of us, if we don't turn they're going to intercept.«

Drift extended his senses. The harvesters were huge lumbering things but the support skippers—two wheeled like a motorcycle with a sail the pilots used to push them faster than their engines ought to take them—they'd be on them in only a few minutes. Drift skimmed the path ahead and plotted a new route, one that would push them up against the western hills. »I'm going to shift right, keep close.«

He pointed his front wheels towards the west, locking up the back to let it swing around to their new heading in a cloud of dust. Ratchet floundered behind him, taking the corner wide. Drift braked as he waited for Ratchet to get back in position.

»How did they know we were here?« Drift said as he watched the Skimmers glide over the ground ahead of them, cutting them off. The Harvesters rolled in behind the pack of FIDORs, pilots high above the sharpened discs of metal.

»Well, either they were watching the border of the Exclusion Zone or our ravenous friends got their attention with all the dang noise.« Ratchet said.

A shot went off and Drift felt a flash of heat above his front wheel. It'd come from behind: the top of the harvesters where the pilots were high enough to have a clear shot.

»Aren't they not supposed to have weapons?« Ratchet grumbled.

»We’re enroute to meet up with the people who’re selling them guns, Ratchet.«

Drift considered the lineup. The Skimmers seemed focused on keeping ahead of them, the FIDORs were keeping pace but couldn't catch up to them and for the moment the Harvesters were more focused on trying to land a shot on the FIDOR pack. »I'll be right back,« Drift promised.

He ignored Ratchet's transmissions of protest and skidded out to the side. He braked abruptly, letting the chase slide past him. Then he gunned it in reverse, locking up his back wheels as he turned into a spin. He transformed and leapt to catch the frame of the passing Harvester. He climbed up the smooth outside frame and then swung himself over the railing of the pilot’s nest. The steam from the engines was thick as fog and the pilot didn’t notice him.

Drift reached into his hip compartment and snagged that bit of gravel he’d put aside earlier. He flicked it at the back of the pilot’s head.

They turned, eyes comically wide. They raised their gun to aim, Drift kicked it out of their hands. He caught the gun neatly, grabbed the pilot by the back of the neck and heaved them overboard, safely out of the crush of the harvester's wheels. Then he stepped to the controls. He dragged the lever for power up into the red and spun the steering wheel until something snapped.

The Harvester oversteered and began to tilt. Drift abandoned ship.  
  
He hit the ground wheels first, already accelerating back towards Ratchet. He swung wide around the FIDORs, who were turning to converge on the downed Harvester. Drift took the opportunity to slide back in place in front of Ratchet. »Got you a gun,« he said.

»I'm a fragging ambulance Drift, how am I supposed to use a gun?« Ratchet said. »Don't _do_ that. Tell me what you’re planning before you pull any stunts.«

»Right,« Drift agreed. »Of course.« Behind them the FIDORs set upon the wrecked Harvester. All but one—the trailing FIDOR ignored the wreck and had gained on Ratchet while Drift was away. The other Harvester was momentarily diverted through, retreating to rescue the pilot Drift had thrown overboard. Not bad.

»So these guys up ahead of us, what's our plan?« Ratchet asked. The three skimmers were now keeping pace maybe 300 yards ahead of Drift, driving in a tight cluster.

They were too light to try to bodily stop them, and the kind of light weaponry they could be packing wasn’t going to do much against pure sentio metallico. The best they could hope to do was harry Ratchet and Drift until the Harvester or other backup could catch up. »They're not a threat,« Drift said.

Just as the skimmers split from their tight formation and reversed course back towards Drift, drawing a line out between them.

»Ratchet, tripwire!«

Drift hesitated, unsure if he should try sliding under the line or vaulting over it, and ran out of time. He was still transforming when it caught him right above the knees. The speed drove the cable into his plating before it snapped and sent Drift face first into the dirt.

Ratchet crawled to his side and rolled him over. "Where's that gun you mentioned?" he asked grimly.

Drift dragged it out of his hip compartment and let Ratchet lift it from his hands. Ratchet lay down covering fire as he yelled at Drift to put pressure on the damn wound. Drift struggled to get his limbs to comply. He felt weird and welmish, like his spark was putting out enough energy to power a frame twice his size. "Not feeling so good, Ratch," he said.

"Yeah, I imagine so. Your body is trying to go into shock and the mood suppressors are fighting it." Ratchet said, scooting over to push his hand against one of the cuts. "Does it hurt?"

"Yeah, it hurts," Drift gritted out.

"Good, then it's going to cauterize itself. We're gonna get you on your wheels and then we _go_ , okay?"

"Yeah." Drift said.

"Good," Ratchet said. The nearest FIDOR tried to charge again, but dodged away from Ratchet's shots and retreated back. The skimmers’ pilots traded shots with him as Ratchet helped Drift onto his feet.

Drift swayed and caught himself on Ratchet's shoulder. He shuttered his optics and tried to still the motion in his head. One harvester down, one still waylaid back behind them. The FIDORs still back behind except for the one Ratchet had nearly winged. Three skippers close enough to cut. He forced his optics back on and hunted the horizon for the western hills. _They were so close_.

It was a relief to fold back into his alt mode, steady and close against the ground. Drift steered out in a spiral, forcing the skimmers to veer back or be run down. He circled back to collect Ratchet, safely back in his alt. Then they were off again.

Behind them the FIDORs began to bray and abandoned the husk of the harvester. Drift tuned them out—easy to do with the turbulence buffeting his frame. Shifting forms hadn't done anything for the queasiness but he needed to force himself to be more alert. He kept nearly getting Ratchet hurt, that couldn't happen.

Two skimmers darted out ahead of them again. This time he watched their hands, caught the glint of metal. »Ratchet, swing wide left on my cue.« He kept pushing forward, pretending he was as stupid as these wannabe bounty hunters clearly thought they were. As the skimmers split apart, Drift jolted off to the right. Ratchet mirrored him.

As the skimmers dragged their tripwire taut, the FIDOR that had been at their heels tumbled over it with a yelp. It thrashed at the cable wrapped around its legs, yanking the skimmers off-balance. Drift didn't stick around.

Ratchet fell into position behind him as they fell back into their path towards the western ridgeline. Drift figured they'd follow the edge of the ridgeline until it was time to cut east to get to the transport point. Their pursuers didn't know exactly _where_ they were going. If they didn't know that they couldn't cut them off.

The ground here was a rumbly mix of gravel and water-smoothed cobbles. The skimmers fell into place behind them but now the terrain was working against them. They wouldn’t be able to pull ahead without overbalancing. Hopefully. The FIDOR pack had massed again, with the other Harvester close behind.

A shadow slid over the ground ahead of them, stretched long by the oncoming sunset. Drift turned his attention to top of the ridgeline as a pair of huge thermal airships rose up, silhouetted figures in the cabins that hung beneath working the flames.

»Drift, on the ridgeline!« Ratchet radioed.

Drift almost messaged back that _yes, he'd noticed the enormous airships, but given that their propellers barely seemed to carry them against the wind, he wasn't especially worried_. Then he saw the first of the threshers slip over the crest of the ridge.

Drift threw himself sideways, trusting Ratchet to follow.

A wave of threshing chariots spilled over the crest of the hill, towing the airships with cables. The FIDORs followed Drift and Ratchet, pack churning like froth on the water. One FIDOR went under the wheels of the harvester with a scream of metal and the skimmers tacked wide to escape the chaos.

Drift pulled ahead, splitting across the open plain with nothing ahead of him and all that chaos hot on their exhaust.

Drift pushed until he could feel Ratchet at his limit. The shadows of the airships oozed across the ground ahead of them.

Ratchet jerked backwards with a grunt of pain. »Frag, they've got spearhooks.«

This time Drift caught the sound, the thunk and rattle before Ratchet was pulled back again. Two of the threshers had dropped their lines to the airships and were bracing chains hooked into Ratchet's plating, trying to drag him back into the clutches of the oncoming horde.

»I'm going to get you free,« Drift said. »Don't brake suddenly.«

»Drift, don't let them hit you.«

»Of course not,« Drift promised, as he leapt into the air, springboarding off of Ratchet's hood to flip himself onto the roof. He landed hard against the cut on his left leg and the world slid for a second before he shook himself out of it. He crabbed his way to the back until he was staring down the threshing chariots, the FIDORs at their heels, the airships and the skimmers now multiplied by reinforcements. All for little old him and the absurd bounty that had been put on his head.

Drift reached down and grabbed one of the chains in his hand, testing its strength. No way he could slice through that with one of his dual swords. Drift thanked Wing for his gift and then drew his Great Sword; pushing his energy into it till it spattered sparks like a hot weld. Another chariot fired a spearhook, aiming high. Drift twirled the Great Sword in his hand, batting it aside. Then he snapped the lines holding Ratchet back.

Ratchet jolted forwards and Drift nearly tumbled over the side. It was worth it to see the thresher pilots dumped on the ground as the chains snapped. The pilots abandoned ship and ran as the FIDORs pounced on the smoking vehicles.

Drift swung the Great Sword into its sheath and hopped over the side, transforming on the way down.

The other threshing chariots had pulled ahead of them, the airships they towed hung overhead. The skimmers were circling round the group in an arc, looking to block them from cutting through the mob of chariots. One of the FIDORs had stayed to savage the abandoned threshers, but that left two still hot on their exhaust.

They were surrounded, or they would be soon.

»Any bright ideas?« Ratchet asked, clearly realizing their situation.

»We go through.« Drift pushed up to ride beside Ratchet. »The skimmers are the weak link.«

Just then, one of the threshing chariots dropped their leadline and peeled away, followed by another. They zipped back towards the western ridge like skitterers abandoning a burning building. The skimmers sped around to follow but the harvester was slow to turn. It hadn’t made it out from under the shadow of the airships before the bombs started falling.

The first shell burst at the feet of the leading FIDOR. Drift didn't see the landing, busy ramming Ratchet out of the way of the bomb arcing towards the ground ahead of his wheels. At speed, Ratchet slammed into the harvester at his flank. Already midway through its turn, the huge machine began to tip.

Drift reversed away from the blast but was still caught in the shockwave.

»Drift! Come on.« Through the acrid smoke Ratchet wobbled in and out of existence like a sliver or a spectre. The air was ringing. Through the static of the smoke, Drift could barely make out the balloons overhead, but that didn't mean they'd given up. Another explosive—a small one—hit the ground off his right flank and send dirt raining down over him.

Drift couldn't make out if the way was clear but better to hit something than go up in flames. He accelerated straight into the thick of the smoke, swerving around phantoms that brushed against his sensors. Maybe they were explosives; maybe they were just ash. He’d be safe once he got out ahead of the airships.

Drift roared out of the smoke and nearly into the jaws of a waiting FIDOR.

He turned, hard. His left wheels lifted off the ground, flipping him onto his side. The FIDOR snarled and lunged.

Drift waited for its jaws to close on him. Instead, a blur tackled the FIDOR and two FIDORs hit the ground and rolled. Drift watched over his raised sword as they snarled and grappled. Finally, finally, he caught a glimpse of a shattered solar panel and felt his spark lift in pride. _That was his FIDOR._ Trying to protect him, again.

"Drift!" Ratchet was at his elbow, pulling him away. "Drift, we have to get out of here."

"In a minute. I need to make sure that FIDOR is okay," Drift said. "It saved me."

"What? Drift, we have to _go_."

"Go, I'll follow," Drift said, said, stepping forward has he drew his second sword.

Ratchet tightened his grip on his arm. "Drift, what the hell? It'll tear you to shreds."

"It won't," Drift said. "I know it won’t. Let me go, Ratchet."

"This is the drugs talking," Ratchet said. "You're not thinking straight."

"Ratchet, there's no time. This FIDOR is different. I met it in the Exclusion Zone and I know it won't hurt me. Trust me." Drift shook Ratchet off and took off at a run. His FIDOR was weaker, half its solar panels missing. The other FIDOR had it pinned. It thrashed, trying to unseat its attacker.

Drift threw himself into the fray, driving his swords into the exposed back of the top FIDOR. It bellowed and tried to toss Drift, he rolled free and spun around to mount another attack. His FIDOR was already at its throat; Drift used the distraction to take another swing at the attacker’s solar panels.

»Drift!« Ratchet blared on his radio, voice bleeding fear. »They've opened the floodgates. You have to go.«

Drift staggered back and looked around, the words not making sense. He spotted Ratchet first, heading to the Eastern ridge and driving hard. Then he saw the water.

The place they were driving through was a dry lakebed; the water that had once fed it was dammed in a reservoir. As that water rushed the lakebed towards them Drift realized why their pursuers had fled. It hadn’t been because of the bombs. They must have gotten a signal from the engineers at the reservoir.

Drift, backing up and sheathing his swords, put two fingers to his mouth and whistled. His FIDOR jerked its head up and caught sight of the oncoming wave.

They fled, as fast as their legs and their wheels could take them. Drift kept his sights fixed on Ratchet, so close to safety already. He ignored the two FIDORs struggling along behind them—either in pursuit or in an attempt at self-preservation, he wasn't sure which.

The first rush of water that hit his wheels was shallow but it sent up a monumental spray as he drove on. The eastern ridge was so close. Ratchet was already there, he was safe. Ratchet was safe.

The water pushed up the sides of his wheels towards his frame and Drift realized he wasn’t going to make it. If he stayed in this mode the water would carry him away and pin him up against the forceshield back at the Exclusion Zone. If he shifted now he’d buy some time but he still wouldn’t be able to make the shore before it was too deep to stand.

Caught between two bad options, he managed to make things worse. When the water rushed up against his undercarriage and he felt his wheels lifting off the ground he shifted back to root form on instinct. Halfway through the transformation he remembered Ratchet's lecture from way back on the Lost Light when Drift and Pipes had their icy misadventure—transforming underwater let water infiltrate your internal systems.

He didn't remember the open wounds cutting across his legs until his sensornet began sparking. The pain drove him to his knees. He overbalanced in the rushing water and everything went skidding to a stop.

 

* * *

 

 

Ratchet unplugged the direct link-up cable and waited for Drift to pass him back the other end. He coiled it around his fist and let his optics shutter off for a moment, tried to collect himself. Cerebrostreaming was always disorienting. With Drift moreso—not just because Drift's perspective was so alien to his and not even because of the intensity with which it reminded Ratchet of Drift's gift. It was seeing himself, his reasoning distorted and almost unrecognizable, like a recording of his voice that he cringed away from because of how wrong it sounded.

He hadn’t expected to see all of that. He couldn’t help wondering if Drift had taken him further back on purpose. Cerebrostreaming was hard to control, maybe it’d been an accident. If it had been intended as a unsubtle reminder of how badly Ratchet had fucked up, really there was no need. He’d figured that one out himself when he’d seen Drift go under the water.

_Drift went under and Ratchet's spark felt like it had slipped beneath the rush of water too. He shouldn't have gone on ahead. He should have turned back. He should never have left him._

_The FIDOR dragged itself up on the bank and Ratchet levelled the gun Drift had given him right between those green eyes. It looked at him, then turned its head to look over its shoulder back towards the water. As if it was looking for something. As if it was missing something._

_Drift had asked him to trust that this FIDOR was different._

_Ratchet holstered the gun and stepped forward. "We need to get Drift," he said, pointing towards the water. "Can you help?" He didn't believe the robot could understand him. He was pretty sure it was going to rip his arm off any second now. But there was no way Ratchet could get to Drift alone._

"So, what do you think, Ratch? Is that sufficient evidence for you?" Drift asked. "It was sentient."

"I don't know if we can know that," Ratchet hedged. "Those could have been programmed behaviors, to allow the machines to interact with organics safely. If it initially read you as an organic those subroutines could have been redirected."

"Is that what you really think?" Drift pressed.

_He clung tight to the FIDOR's back as they entered the water. The FIDOR's long legs cut through the waves. Ratchet slung over the side and wrapped his arm around Drift's still frame. He yelled something wordless in encouragement as he pulled Drift back towards him._

_The FIDOR struggled to the shore as the waters rose deeper. It slipped and Ratchet and Drift were pulled back under the water. Ratchet surfaced and slipped back under then felt a solid mass pushing him forward._

"I don't know what I think," Ratchet admitted. "But it saved you. That's all I know. It saved you."

"Do you think there’s a chance..."

"The water took it," Ratchet said. "I'm sorry Drift."

_He laid Drift down on the bank and turned back to the water but the FIDOR was too far out and the water had risen too high. He watched helplessly as it struggled, unable to gain its footing again._

Drift looked almost as upset as he’d been when Ratchet nearly made him fritz during their escape. He bit his bottom lip and nodded. "If you could have done something you would have."

"I don’t mean—the FIDORs are fine. They’re damned hard to kill, that’s why the folks on Kirtac had opened up the floodgates. They got washed back into the Exclusion Zone; we could see from orbit."

"Oh." Drift said. "That’s not so bad."

"You couldn’t have brought it on a spaceship anyway," Ratchet said. "It would literally have torn this place to shreds. But I know you would have wanted to say goodbye."

"Stupid, right?" Drift said with a laugh. "It wouldn’t have understood me anyway."

Ratchet pulled Drift into a hug. "Not stupid. I thought I lost you. I thought I lost you again and I’d never get a chance to make things right."

"I'm right here," Drift said, like Ratchet didn't already have him in his arms. Like he hadn’t carried him in his arms to the jump point. Like he hadn’t spent hours drying out his frame and reversing the damage from where he’d shorted out.

Ratchet pulled away. "I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life and I don’t usually notice except in hindsight. I don’t want to wait til there’s nothing I can do but regret. The way you and I live, what are the odds we'd survive long enough for a relationship to go wrong anyway?"

Drift gave him a flat stare. Maybe too early to joke about that.

"What I wanted to say was...you're right. There's something between us and no amount of me overthinking things is gonna make that untrue. I don't want to walk away from this without trying."

Drift squeezed his hand. "Ratch, what are you saying?" He whispered.

"Would you—I know, I messed it all up and I understand that you're angry. But if you're willing to give me a second chance, I want to try. Being together."

"You want to be sparkmates?"

Ratchet tried to stop his spark from squeezing in terror. "Let's try one date first?" He suggested faintly.

"Yes. Yes, of course," Drift said. He nodded slowly, looking more and more worried. "Ratchet, how do people date?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks for all of your continual support. It means so much to me. 😭
> 
> Especially big shout out to all the people who responded to my request on tumblr a few months back for reassurance that this series was worth finishing when I was in the middle of a rough patch. 💕 Thanks so much y'all 
> 
> Next chapter: _NO ACTION, ONLY FEELINGS - Drift and Ratchet try to figure out how the hell dating works_

**Author's Note:**

> I love comments so feel free to tell me anything. You can also find me on tumblr at [ notwhelmedyet](http://notwhelmedyet.tumblr.com/), though I'm mostly on discord and/or working on writing lately


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